If Only
by Dearest Dawn
Summary: If Zelda was a murdering madwoman, Ganondorf was King, and Link was trying to navigate the tricky moral grounds leading to a peace of sorts. How to save Hyrule sans Temple of Time, sans Master Sword, sans the comforting lines separating good and evil.
1. Chapter 1

**This chapter is fairly short, but I would like to think it's worth reading. They will get longer! A little violent at the top.**

**Also, this was originally in present tense,but I went back through and changed all of the verbs. Tell me if I missed any.  
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**I can't give too much of a summary without giving the main plot line away, so let's just say there will be blood, love, and lots of Zelda style butt-kicking. Enjoy!**

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**One**

It was simply amazing how accustomed one grew to murder. Every nerve in my body singed and crackled as I drove the knife into the man's side. Pure ecstasy. The look in his eyes as the consciousness drained from his weary face - better than any drug, any high. This was the world I reveled in, a world of blood and solitude.

I buried the knife deeper into his damp flesh, and a mist of sweat broke over his brow like breath in cold air. His lips fell apart in pain, while mine contrasted his in a smile. A dark tear trickled from his mouth, red and luscious. I knew he was almost done with, mine for the taking. I could simply stash the corpse in a nearby dump. I didn't worry about such trivial matters; there were enough inanimate bodies in the street without my hunts.

The man in front of me was a weak obstacle - how disappointing. If he hadn't been in the wrong place at the wrong time, I would have let him live. But he knew too much about me. He was keeling over in agony, no sound escaping his bleeding mouth. I twisted my dagger slowly, documenting his reaction as it spun like a minute hand: slowly, slowly, slowly. Every tiny movement sent shivers of pain through his spine, causing his back to hunch closer and closer to defeat.

Why kill the man? Well, I say, why not? He, too, was a criminal, and a major threat. Not to society. No, what did I care of those wretches and bastards who left me to die? The fool was -I grinned at the past tense smugly- a threat to _me._ My authority, my power, was at risk with this pathetic exile roaming the sewers of city streets. I didn't make my targets a secret. I liked the chase.

Nor, I thought as I yanked the dagger from his neck, watching him fall to the ground, did I make my motives a secret. I hated the entire kingdom. I hated them for turning their filthy backs on me in my one moment of need. For everything I had done for them. Every last one of these people was guilty in my eyes, and if they challenged me, they would be silenced.

No exceptions.

I slipped the knife back beneath my cloak and retrieved my bow. I wanted to shoot and leave. Having to wipe my precious rapiers of his blood would be a hassle, and I was tired of this particular challenger. He had hardly put up any struggle, and I was bored with him. I aimed the bow between his eyes, drew my elbow back, and finished the poor excuse for a man. I ignored his last cry and turned towards the streets. No witnesses. Good. Most people headed indoors when they saw any one who might be a Creant. I however, would never work for those dogs of the Castle.

With a final flick of my dark cloak, I disappeared around a corner, ducking into a dark alley, and headed towards where ever my feet took me. As long as my glamour lasted, I was fine. My normally rose-brown hair fell in flaming scarlet locks beneath my hood. The image of a Gerudo was intimidating enough to avoid any contact with other criminals and perverted drunks. I didn't feel like killing any alcoholics tonight; they weren't worth the effort. Plus they brought back bitter memories.

A gust of wind encouraged me to pull the cloak tighter around my thinly clad body. It seemed the winter would be draping us in frigid weather early this season. Gerudo women hardly needed armor, and the dessert didn't require any heavy clothing. Time and time again I'd considered escaping back to the dessert, but my magic wouldn't hold up a glamour for more than a few hours at a time. Even though the Gerudo understood my hatred of men, they wouldn't let an outsider live in the dessert with them permanently. My amateur magic wasn't enough to deceive the dessert women. But even if I could find away around that problem, I didn't trust them anymore. They were friends, until their King began to thirst for more control. The lone Gerudo male had a lust for power even I could not ape. He was a dictator in the making, and I found his swift rise through the ranks thoroughly disturbing. And now…

I didn't want to think about now.

My eyes flicked through the grimy streets, searching all the crevasses and hiding places I could find. No one could hide for me. A rough life in the streets had prepared me for everything: attacks, drunks, rapes, murders. I had seen everything by the time I was fourteen. I was thrown to the dogs when I was twelve, and now, seven years later, I was ready for my revenge. No one I loved had been murdered, I didn't want to reign over Hyrule, nothing had been stolen that I wanted back. I simply wanted revenge on all of those who had put me through the horrors of the slums. And anyone who got in my way wouldn't last long. Of that I was sure.

_No one in the dumps, _I speculated while scanning. _Back alley's empty, so are that tenement's windows, and the ne-_

I stopped in my tracks, every hair on my neck standing on end, like I had been stuck by lightning. My fingers found the hilt of a rapier, an instant reflex to whatever was behind me. Slowly, creeping, I turned to face my new challenge. I loved a chase. I loathed a surprise.

The figure was tall, with dark hair slicked beneath a heavy hood. I saw a pair of coal-black eyes glinting from beneath the wool. I guessed from the heavy build and thick arms that it was a male. He was standing with his head cocked to the side, arms raised, and every nerve in his body on alert. But what I eyed the most was not the hulking man, nor the Castle crest below his left ear, but the needle-sharp arrow skillfully pointed at my skull. A Creant. The Castle must have gotten wind of my actions. _All the better_, I thought.

"Good evening, Highness" he growled, a grimace in his voice.

"Please," I smirked, my lips spreading over sharp canines in a malicious smile. I pulled my hood back and drew my rapiers from their black scabbards. "It's Zelda."

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**Thought? Opinions? CONSTRUCTIVE criticism? R&R, please, because this is my first fan fic. Thanks! **


	2. Chapter 2

**Yes, I posted this less than a week ago. BUT I stayed home sick today, and had nothing better to do. This is the result of complete and total boredom. A result of Imogen Heap and Iron and Wine. Enjoy.  
**

Surprise flickered briefly in his eyes as my glamour melted away. My cloak fell to my ankles, billowing out as my lightweight trousers gave way to long heavy skirts. My hair grew and tumbled down my back in thick brown tresses. The thin red fabric wrapping around my chest spread into an ivory bodice. A triforce was embroidered on the front of my long dress, and I could tell he was weary of me. The Creant's eyes finally lifted to mine as my irises quickly swirled from red to indigo to a dark violet.

He glanced at the twin rapiers in my palms and tightened his grip on the bow. I knew he wouldn't kill me. Disable, perhaps, but his commander wanted me alive. I could tell he understood what I was thinking, and it just made my lips spread even farther across my face. But he gulped down his fear and resumed a steely gaze.

I shifted, raising a rapier to my ear, the other ready to stab at any moment. "This," I hissed at his threatening demeanor, "Is a suicide mission. You know it as well as I, and you are obviously trying to prove yourself to the great King. How brave."

Brows knit together, he pressed his lips together. I chuckled. "Drop the hood, Creant. I cannot make out your face. I like to see the eyes of those I destroy. And the bow goes down, too." Though I couldn't see his face clearly, he looked doubtful. "I will not kill you…yet. You will have your chance to get at me."

He moved his weight from foot to foot and lowered his bow a fraction of an inch. I nodded and he dropped it to his side, shoving his hood back in one swift movement. _Fast,_ I thought. _Interesting. They've given up on brute strength._

I stepped forward, drawing closer to his side. His face was plain, dark, with small brown eyes and thin lips. He stiffened as I began to circle him with a blade pointed at his throat.

"Brave," I whispered, sultry murderess that I was. "But foolish. Do you really think you can defeat me? I am too strong. I am too passionate. Too much for your King to overtake. Did you know that he fears me? Yes, your pathetic ruler has weaknesses, like the rest of us."

He gulped, and I rested the flat edge of my weapon against his throat. I had stopped circling and we stood eye to eye. I was taller than he, a detail that thrilled me to no end. I was not some pathetic princess who waited to be rescued, beaten down by the streets, waiting for some air headed prince to waltz my way. I took care of myself. I killed for myself, I fought for myself, and I would bloody well save myself. And I would make sure he knew that damn well.

"I have another question," I added as he looked down at the rapier. "Do you know how many Creants have hunted me before?" He began to shake, but he gave no reply. "Answer me!" I shouted, only a few inches from his face. "Do you know? Tell me!"

He whimpered as I began to turn the blade into his throat. "Thr-three?" He cried quietly. I grinned at his answer, and I removed the rapier from his neck. Stepping around to his back, I wrapped my cold arms around his waist. He didn't move a fraction as I rested my chin on his shoulder. My finger rubbed circles on his chest, but I knew that would only make him more tense. Humans were so simple to understand.

"See, now this is interesting," I giggled like a young girl. "The last one who came said 'five'. I see that your King is suppressing more and more from his minions. If they knew the whole truth, then many of them would probably rebel against him. But he is strong. Not as strong as I, but a force to be reckoned with, none the less." My cold fingers pushed under his elbows, my arms now around his torso. I turned my head so my mouth was almost touching his cheek.

"Twelve," I sighed. "Twelve of you have been sent to me in the past two and a half years. You, poor soul, make lucky number thirteen. And do you know how many of the King's Creants have returned to him?" He didn't move, but I already knew his answer. "Yes, that is right. None of them. I, Zelda Harkinian, your crown princess, who _tragically_ disappeared seven years ago," he breathed in sharply, anticipating the truth, "_killed all of them_."

He let out a fearful sob. I laughed in his ear, caressing his throat with a dirty fingernail. The bulge in his throat bobbed up and down. I dropped my arms briefly to replace my rapiers in their scabbards. But I was back to his body in a second, my lithe limbs around his shoulders before he could escape. I hugged him to my chest so I could feel his nervous breath. He was shivering, but I was certain it wasn't from the cold as I knit my fingers through is clean hair. He wouldn't last a week outside the palace. The way the Castle pampered its minions was disgusting. I was glad I had been thrown out now that I saw what I could have become. I might have grown soft, compassionate, even kind. What a horrible thought.

Yet I knew that wasn't how it would have worked out. I would be bitter either way. With the King around, nothing would have been pleasant. He had made sure I knew the truths of his reign before I was exiled. That awful man ruined my life. I simply intended to return the favor.

"Why were you told to come and find me?" I asked in a low voice. "Tell me everything." I whispered in his ear, my lips practically touching the soft lobe.

"I," he replied, his voice quivering as much as his body, "Was told to find the ruthless princess masquerading as a killer." He swallowed back repulsion. "I now see that is n-no masquerade…none at all. The Master told me that a great reward awaited me if I could capture the p-princess. I…I jumped at the chance to…to prove myself. I now see that was a mistake." I nodded, resting my freezing palm over his throat.

He continued.

"He told me that this mission had been failed by th-three incompetent Creants before me. He told me…that they had been killed by the princess's guards. I know see that she - I mean you need no guard." His voice broke. He was shaking so much that I had to steady him with my body. "The Master also said that the deaths of the three Creants had…had not been publicly announced. Nor, apparently, were the other nine murders."

It was self defense. I thought impatiently to myself. This story was taking far too long, but I was developing a plan in my head. Maybe he had useful information about his Master. It wasn't likely, but I was going to milk him for every bit of information he was worth. _Then_ he would die. I just had to decide what to do after that.

Tremors were jabbing his body with such force that is I hadn't been holding him he would have fallen to his knees. This was the best the Castle had to send after me?I was far too tempting to let him fall and lash out with a rapier. But I resisted. I needed his knowledge. Most of my sources were beginning to run dry. That probably had something to do with me killing several of them, but I shook that thought out of my head.

The Creant had tears of fear running down his cheeks and his voice was so weak, I had to struggle to understand. "He said…go…night…get you alone…the guard would be waiting and…I might die…wasn't afraid…cocky…stupid…surely going to die…" he dithered. I was tiring of he speech. I quieted him with a gentle shh, though he continued to convulse in pain.

I pressed my lips to his ear, finally touching his face with my cautious fingertips. "Listen, poor soul," I soothed his worries. "I am not going to kill you. I have taken pity on your sorrowful tale. Your King is an intimidating pne, and he has great power over people. But know this." My voice, previously like that of a mother, turned sharp like a knife. "Your King _ruined_ me. He killed my innocent spirit. I will have my revenge on all those who have hurt me in any way. Now, I have one last question for you."

I was going to let him go. Go back to his Master. Let him carry his horrid tale back to the King. I knew what would happen to him. I didn't leave loose ends. I got rid of them. This Creant was a loose end in my work.

"Do you know what Ganondorf did to me?" I felt him flinch beneath my hands. "Yes, I call your King by his name. I have no fear of him or his capabilities." I was kissing his ear now, running my lips over the warm flesh. He shuddered with every movement of my mouth. "I can tell you what he did to me."

And I told him. I told him what Ganon did. How the whole nation loved him at his coronation. How he made amends between Hyrule and the Gerudo. How he came to my father before his death and pledged his allegiance. How he gained his trust until my father named him the next heir if he were to die before I was eighteen. How Ganon took the promotion with grace and humility. And how he crept to my father's room in the night. And how he tortured and killed the man who trusted him the most.

I finally explained to him why I hated Ganon the most. What he did after his coronation. Why he threw me out in the streets. I told him the whole story. That I didn't hate Ganondorf because he murdered my father, or because he stole my throne, or because he was slowly killing Hyrule with his propaganda and lies. I told him why I really hated him.

I told him, and he screamed.

---

A dark-haired man with small beady eyes stumbled through the towering double doors. The King was flicking his fingers in impatience when his Creant fell to his knees before the throne. The young man was mumbling to himself, whimpering slowly. Ganondorf tapped his heavy boot impatiently as the Creant cried on the floor. The King sighed; he could take it no more.

"What is it! Tell me _now!_" Ganondorf yelled at the man. "_Where_ is she!" They were demands, not questions. The man was quaking with fear.

"She…she sent me back…she s-_saved_ me. She…told me what you did to her." He shuddered. Ganon's eyes flew open and he began shuddering with rage.

"Imbecile! She didn't save you! She doesn't leave anything in her wake except _destruction!_ She knew what I would do!. You should have run." Ganon was furious. He couldn't believe she had stooped that low. _That conniving little street rat,_ he thought _How_ dare _she tell the truth!_ He stood and began pacing in front of his failed minion. How useless. His Creants were unsuccessful - thirteen in fact. But this was the first one she had sent back alive. She was changing; she was less predictable, and that was very bad.

"She sent you back," he explained angrily, "because she knew I would have to kill you. She realized that you knew too much. You know, even if you had succeeded, I would have killed you. Accepting this mission was worse than digging yourself a grave. I cannot believe how stupid my Creants have grown. If you had caught the princess, you still would have known too much. She does the same thing with her sources. She's getting good."

He was pacing faster and faster, whipping his cape around in a frenzy. He knew she was up to something, which meant it was more important that ever to catch her. _My Creants are useless now._ He considered all the possibilities. Anyone who was sent would die. If Zelda didn't kill them, Ganondorf would. He was running out of Creants._ Maybe_ he thought _if I didn't send a Creant…if I sent a knight from the barracks…_

He looked up from his frantic pacing to see the nervous man creeping towards the doors. He was trying to escape! Did he honestly think he stood a chance against the great Ganondorf? How ridiculous. Without thinking, the King flew to the man's side and stuck him with his monster sword. The whimpering fool fell with a sorrowful cry, but Ganon ignored it. As he killed the poor excuse for a soldier, he remembered a name. A knight who he could send. Losing him would be of no consequence because he had no family. No one cared what would happen to him. He had few friends, but they were all members of the Castle's army. They would not question the disappearance. He grinned at his own brilliance.

"Guard!" he shouted, returning to his throne. The man at the door scampered in, stepping over the corpse without a second glance. Dead bodies in the throne room were nothing new. "Yes, sire?" he asked.

"Bring me the knight called Link. I have a mission for him"

**As usual, reviews are highly appreciated. It wasn't amazing, I know, but it'll get me from point A to point B. Still fairly short, but I wanted to wrap up the introduction for our favorite serial killing princess. I'll drag poor innocent Link into the picture soon! Whoo!**

**And another quick note. I've finished the third chapter, but in order to keep everyone on the edge of their seats, I'm not putting it up yet! Why, yes, I am quite the loser, and cruel at that, but I like to keep you interested. So if you like it, please leave reviews. I thrive off of them! Again, I love constructive criticism and take no offense to honest advice and opinions.  
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	3. Chapter 3

**Yikes, haven't updated since November and "If Only" was over nine hundred stories back in the Zelda Archive. I'm a bad author, I know! Sorry, but I literally rewrote this chapter 5 times. I finally found the right music to write it to, though, so that helped a lot. As always, R&R. **

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Chapter 3

"Get back here you stupid beast. I _will _catch you. And you _will _be in trouble, ridiculous animal. Oh, you'll be sorry once I get my hands on you, yes you will."

I grumbled as I dragged myself out of the shallow pond at the edge of the Zora River. Epona snickered and trotted off, tossing her head in reply to my threats. I swiped my sleeve across my brow, but it was just as wet as my bare skin. "Stupid horse," I muttered.

Eventually I caught up with Epona and grabbed her reins tightly in one hand and jerked her head down to my own. "Now listen," I told her sternly. "That was not very nice of you. We were just stopping for a drink, not a round of dump-the-rider-in-the-pond." My brows furrowed, but she just seemed to think it was the most amusing thing in the world that I was soaked and, save for her lower legs, she was completely dry.

"I wouldn't antagonize the hand that feeds you, my friend." I sighed as I dried my hair on a spare tunic. "Not a very wise decision on your part." She simply snorted and began grazing. "Hey!" I yelped, dropping my tunic and heaving up on her bridle. "We have no time for that, and you know it! We need to get back to town before dark. You know as well as I how strict the Creants are getting about wandering about after dark. And they surely wouldn't open the gates after sundown, even for a knight and his tired old horse-" she glared at me "-I'm sorry, tired, _young, beautiful mare_. Better?"

Epona head butted my back in a manor she seemed to think was affectionate, a gesture I took as approval. I scratched her ears before shaking the last of the water droplets from my skin. Seeing as the sun was almost at its zenith, I mounted Epona and ignored the sticking discomfort that came from riding in damp trousers. We headed off into Hyrule Field on our long journey. We had finished our business in the Zora River Valley, and the Creants had insisted I return to Castle Town as quickly as possible. They had become more and more restless as of late, and their reach into the Castle's politics was stretching farther and farther. They were pushing the limits as far as they could bend, and it was only a matter of time before everything shattered into a million tiny pieces.

---

Creants had always been unreasonably powerful; after all, they were the right hand of the King, as though they were merely extensions of his own body, his own mind. They never acted of their own will, only in his stead. Creants had a tendency to disregard the laws and restrictions of the militia completely. There were extremely powerful, and extremely brutal.

I was one of few knights who had no desire to be one of them.

I wanted no title, I didn't want to do the Kings dirty work, and I most certainly didn't want a swirling, fanged Castle symbol tattooed below my left ear. I had never wanted to be in the army, but seeing as I was a Hylian and not a Kokiri, I had run out of options. I had grown among the eternal children believing I, too, would remain in the confines of their forest for the rest of my time. I could find my way through the Lost Woods alone, speak with the Deku Tree, and I had even found one of the spirits' most valued treasures: the Kokiri sword.

But those days were far behind me now. I had left the forest after the Deku Tree revealed his illness. He told me I was not of the Kokiri, and that my destiny lay outside the leaves of the forest. The Deku Tree gave me a green jewel, but refused to tell me what it was. He simply told me to guard it carefully. To guard it with even my life, should the need arise.

I traveled to Hyrule Castle in search of my future, with no idea what I could do except beg for scraps. I journeyed to Lon Lon Ranch, where I saw Epona for the first time and learned her lullaby from the farm girl called Malon. I marched to Kakariko Village and learned to care for animals from the farmhand at the chicken coup, history from the guards at the old Sheika house, and whittling from the carpenters. I even glimpsed the young princess in the castle courtyard a year or two before her disappearance, and she stared at me with frightened blue eyes that seemed oddly familiar before the guards took me away.

I worked briefly at Lon Lon Ranch, and won the promise of a steed from the lazy land owner. In time, though, the farm's management changed and I moved to the city to look for work. With no other jobs available, I enlisted into the army and was made into a lowly page. Life was good to me for a long while. My knowledge of swordplay and weapons expanded, and I learned more of the history of Hyrule than the guards in Kakariko had to tell me. I enjoyed my time as a page; it was difficult, but I was up to the challenge.

And then the King died. Hyrule considered itself lucky, because the King had named his heir not a month before. The country would have most likely split into a raging civil war among the Houses of Nobles had there not been another to take the crown while the princess grew older.

The new King was crowned, and that was the beginning of the nightmare.

---

I was pulled out of my thoughts as Lon Lon Ranch sprouted over the horizon, the bricked silo used to store hay (and sometimes cows) towering above the ranch's walls. Within the next hour, we drew closer and closer to the familiar settlement. Epona grew increasingly antsy, excited to be so close the place she had grown up in. I felt a twinge of regret knowing that if I returned to the place I had grown up, no one would recognize me; the Kokiri remembered me as an eleven year old boy full of life and promise, not a twenty year old knight who didn't know what to live for anymore.

When we reached the gates, Malon ran out to greet us, her fiancée close behind, and a impressive number of cuckoos on their heels. I explained that we could not stay long if we intended to make it to the Castle by nightfall, but Malon would have none of it. I considered jumping the ranch walls as I had once in my past, but I did not want to be rude to my old friend. Talon was nowhere to be found, but Ingo, the most recent ranch owner, was whipping a pair of stubborn mares with a smug expression. I did not like Ingo.

I finally yanked myself free of Malon's death-grip, which she appeared to believe was a hug. Even more incredible, I managed to escape from the farm within a half hour with only four bottles of milk, two brown eggs (how she expected me to carry them, I have no idea), and a half dozen requests to visit more often. A record low, surely.

I bid the happy couple and their following of horses and hens farewell. Wrapping the eggs up in as much padding as possible, I wedged them down into my saddle bags. The sun was dipping lower into the sky, and I was anxious to be back before the Creants could find fault with me. As we trekked farther on towards the city, I stared at the sky, realizing how much I missed being able to see it. Blue skies did not exist in Castle Town. The sky was grey every day, dark and solemn.

In the city, I had a small room in the Castle's quarters. I had nothing to complain about; I ate every day, I had a roof over my head, and I had clothing and shoes to protect my feet. By the standards of most citizens, I was royalty. But I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something missing in my life, something else I had to do. Like perhaps things should have played out differently.

I sighed, shaking my head from side to side. Such thoughts would get me nowhere. What was in the past could not be changed, unless there was a way to manipulate time. But that was ridiculous, an idea for absurd daydreamers who regretted what they had done in days before.

Finally, as the sun slipped and fell down to the edge of the horizon, I reached the Castle Town gates. Epona was sluggish and hungry below me, and I rubbed her neck in encouragement. We stepped through the gates and weaved our way through the crowded streets, which looked more and more like open sewers every day. No sooner had I seen the first Creant than he yanked me aside and addressed me harshly.

"Knight, you are Link, no?" he growled.

I looked back at him with my weary eyes. "Aye, 'tis me." I answered.

The Creant sniffed and brushed his hair away from his left ear, obviously showing off his crest. The ink looked darker than that of most Creants one found, so I figured he had just been inducted into the King's personal guard. By the way he was acting, like he was the heir to the crown should anything happen to the King, he thought he could murder any person in the streets and get away with it. With a quick stab of shock, I realized he probably could.

"_Link,_ then." The Creant huffed irritably. "Lowly knight, the Master needs to see you."

---

Heart thumping against my chest, I walked up the long, dark, spiraling staircase to the King's chambers. Why on earth would he need to see me? Surely if I had done him wrong and he wanted me dead he could have simply sent out a Creant as an assassin. I didn't think this meeting would kill me…immediately. Soldiers disappeared from time to time, but no one thought anything of it; a soldier's job was to fight, and if they died in the process, so be it. Another would quickly take his place.

I hesitated in front of the King's chamber doors, but the footman at the door was beginning to stare at me. I held my breath and pushed the door in.

The King's chamber was richly decorated in thick tapestries that, no doubt, told of his great accomplishments, how he had crushed several of the neighboring nations into submission and taxation, how he had made peace between the Hylians and the Gerudo by awarding his people their own house among the nobles and, over time, making them the most powerful. A long crimson carpet, hand woven, stretched out between the double doors and the throne. I couldn't help but think that the carpet was red in an attempt to disguise any blood stains in the fibers. For the most part, this had worked, but I saw one particular spot that looked just a shade darker than the rest. And I couldn't ignore that thick, rusty scent in the air…

I tried not the think about it.

And then there was the King himself. He was perched on an intricately carved throne of oak, studded with opals, a rainbow of pearls, and a set of the golden triangles that were on all things holy. He was wearing full-body black leather armor, with a midnight and plum cape draped around his shoulders. His skin was the color of ash, and a shock of red hair was neatly combed to the back of his head. And the King's eyes – his eyes were the color of fresh blood. His eyes were locked onto mine, and he was smiling a dark, disturbing smile. It took all of my might not to just turn away from his horrid, powerful face.

"Good evening," He said in barely more than a whisper, an awful, gravely whisper.

I tucked my left arm behind my back and touched my index and middle fingers on my right hand to the pulsing crevasse below my left ear. Keeping my hands there, I bowed low, low to the ground, in the King's greeting. It was originally the Creants's salute, but somehow it caught on in the barracks and became the standard.

"You're Highness, O gracious Master. My will is your will. What do you wish of me?" I said what any other knight would have, had they been but in the same difficult position.

"Sir Link, is it?" He asked absentmindedly, suddenly very interested in the dirty valleys of his arm bracers. I nodded in reply, but he was already continuing, his voice low and careful. "I have a tiny little problem." He glanced at me, with less interest than he was putting into his perfect armor. He began again, very slowly. "There is a prisoner who has escaped from my grasp. It is no big deal, just a young troublemaker running through the streets of Castle Town undisciplined. Undisciplined." The King repeated, finally turning his full attention to me.

"In order to have a good, fair rule, we must all be disciplined, Sir Link. Just find this prisoner and bring it back to me, if you would be so kind. Alive. No real problem." He smiled that horrid, hollow grin again that sent shivers down my spine.

"Your will shall be done," I answered. The King nodded and was about to dismiss me when –

"But if you don't mind me asking, my Liege," I asked as the King scowled, "If this is such a minor matter, why did you yourself ask it of me? Would a messenger not be adequate to inform me of this task? I am not complaining, Greatness, simply curious."

"I do not condone curiosity, Sir Link," The King snapped quickly, "it leads to unnecessary questions and prodding. Do what you are told, knight, and ask nothing more. Now, I wish to be alone. The Creant with all the information you need for your task is at the bottom of the stairwell. Leave me."

I bowed again and wondered what the problem was. There was more going on here than an unruly runaway. I ducked out of the throne room and sprinted down the hundreds of steps to receive the information on the task at hand.

I would understand what was happening in time.

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**And thus ends Link's not-so-amazing still-very-short introduction. Whoo-hoo. Call me on any spelling mistakes if you see them.**

**Ch. 3 music: Time to pretend by MGMT & Our Time is Running Out by Muse**

**Chapter four will be up...eventually. Once the plot picks up chapters will get much longer.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hello again. Over 5,000 words. Whoo-Hoo! Call me on any spelling errors or srappy grammar please, I didn't have much time to look this over. **

**Music: In Bad Dreams -the God Machine Silver stallion - Cat Power (love her love her LOVE her) ** **Let go - Imogean Heap**

**Enjoy!**

The man seated before me was shivering, weak, and, like most of the whelks I dealt with, incredibly pathetic. He was twisting his sweaty hands nervously, trying to wipe the moisture from his palms unsuccessfully. I stared at him skeptically, one eyebrow raised and arms crossed over my chest. Why did I _ever_ hire him? I suppose he was one of my older sources, but none the less, at any age I could have seen he was a disaster in the making. He was nearly bald, with an almost transparent tuft of blonde hair atop his head. He had washed-out, watery eyes – it seemed all my sources were on the verge of crying as of recent – and a twisted nose that looked as if someone had grabbed hold of it and turned it as far as they could. I imagined doing that to him myself, simply reaching across the dirty table and breaking his nose. It was a tempting thought, but I still needed what information he had to offer.

"Good evening, sir" I said, low and even. He looked as though he repressed a shiver, and I withheld a smile. I terrified him. But that was the reaction I was aiming for. "I hear your wife's pregnancy is going well. Best of wishes to your newest child." The mention of his family made him shrink in his seat, shaking his head from side to side.

"Pl…Please mistress. Don't hurt them. _Please._" His whimpering was rather irritating, but I looked as sympathetic as possible. He knew I wouldn't have called for him if everything was going well.

"No worries, good sir. I simply wanted to talk to you." My smile frightened him. "I was going to ask you how your job out west is coming. I expect I should have good news by now?"

He was panicked, completely distraught with fear. Fear of me.

Excellent.

"M-mistress," he stuttered annoyingly, "All goes w-well. We are c-coming v-ve-very close to a disc-covery, ma'am. _Very._"

I nodded and glanced at my nails. There was a splotch of dried blood beneath my left ring finger. I couldn't for the life of me remember where it came from. Had I punched someone, or merely injured myself doing something trivial? Perhaps my hand had been shut in a door. I had come to ignore pain, so I had no idea whose blood was on my hand.

"Why is it," I drawled "that this is our third meeting this harvest and I _still _don't know where the Gerudo's ore mine is? I gave the task to you at the last Festival. That was four seasons ago. Four seasons, and you and the crew I so kindly administered to your control still can't find an ore mine? They aren't particularly small, sir. Surely the Gerudo haven't hidden it in the air. The mine has to be a reasonable distance from the desert camp itself, no more than a score of miles away from the village. The blacksmith's factory is most definitely in the village, no?" He nodded, his chin dipping ever so slightly. "That, in fact, is the _only _news you have brought me since the last Festival. And I myself could have located the smith's shop in a single scouting trip. It smells horrid! It's not very difficult to find!" Somewhere along to way, I had stood up and planted my palms on the table. I was staring down at the cringing man, yelling harshly. "And yet I have continued to supply you with resources, protecting your family from the eyes of the Creants and their Goddess forsaken King! Why. _Why?_"

The pub we sat in was completely silent, all eyes peering from beneath dark cloaks towards our corner. I didn't care. As long as people were afraid of me, intimidated, what worry did I have?

My hopeless subordinate trembled before me. I saw his eyes dart around the pub, looking for exits. Ha! As if he could escape from me. I had a half dozen guards placed sporadically around the shop, and that was only if he could break from my grasp, a highly unlikely scenario. I could almost see the ill-fated thoughts churning in his head. And then I saw the ideas change, as he carefully calculated what the best answer to my question was.

The truth was there was no good answer. No matter what he said, it would not end well for him. But I had given him his time to fulfill a simple task, and he had failed.

Lifting his face to mine, he opened his mouth. And he uttered the very last words I expected.

"Because you trust me?"

It was such a stupid answer, I didn't know what to do with it at first. I stared at him, dumbstruck. And then I laughed. I couldn't remember the last time I had really laughed because I found something to be truly funny.

"Trust?" I chortled. He seemed to think he had struck the right chord. He had no idea how wrong he was. "What do you know about trust?" My laugh turned into a growl. "I don't _trust_ anyone. I have no companions. I hate almost all the people I hire, and I have absolutely _no _respect for you. You are the lowest of the low, the scum of Hyrule. Why the Goddesses even put you in this world is beyond me. Perhaps simply to serve superiors such as myself. But trust?"

I threw the table between us aside like a toy, my arms tense. Grabbing him by the throat, I slammed him up against the wall. My nails drew fresh blood from crescent pinpoints in the edges of his neck. "Who do you think you _are?_" I shouted, his face inches from my own. His feet dangled several inches off the ground as I pushed him farther up the wall. "You don't know who I am! Why the _hell_ should I trust you, of all the horrid, cowardly people in this world? I've never trusted anyone, I've never respected anyone, and I've never loved anyone! Not even my own _father!_ And here you are, suggesting that I should trust _you?_ YOU?"

I threw him to the ground with such force that the fallen table beside him shook. Glasses rattled from their damp circles on the bar, and customers stared at us with a mix of curiosity and awe. My cloak had fallen from my body, exposing my loose tunic and trousers, light brown hair swirling around my face.

I brushed the tresses from my face and leaned down to the man on the floor. "One reason," I asked in rough whisper. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right here, right now. It would be easy. I could pull the thirsty dagger from my belt and slash it across your throat. Simple as that. You would hardly even feel it. So give me _one _reason why I shouldn't do it."

He pressed his face into the wood floor, a bruise flowering across his cheekbone and a hint of tears at the corners of his eyes. "Ma'am." The man spoke quietly, hid body vey still. "The Great One is moving. There is something he wants from you, though we have no idea what it is. He needs it, whatever it may be. He…is speaking of the Temple. He wants you very…very badly. The Gerudo are impatient for him to finish what he is doing, and they speak of it often. Te-terrible…" he sobbed.

I wasn't terribly surprised; I had figured Ganondorf wanted something of me for quite some time. Why else would his Creants try to capture me alive? I had wracked my brain for anything he might have found useful. The Temple of Time… What on earth did he wa-

Goddesses dammit. Surely he didn't intend on that. Surely he wasn't that foolish.

One of the guards I'd had for the past three Festivals came up to me and bowed. He asked me what punishment I intended for the slack-mouthed fool on the floor, rubbing at his neck and muttering quietly to himself.

"Send him to the salt plains." I answered absent mindedly. At this the beaten man looked up at me with wide eyes. They held some kind of emotion I had no name for. Thanks? Greif? Perhaps some mix of the two. "My…family?" he asked. I waved my hand and told the guard to take the whelk and send him to the Termanian shipyards as quickly as possible. Two guards dragged him from the pub as I ordered a mug of mead. My left hand was covered in the blood from the whimpering fool's neck. I clenched my fist, unable to remember how many people had bled onto my fingers. But I always remembered who I killed. No matter how lowly, how pathetic they were, I remembered my victim's faces, the fights they put up, the last sounds they ever uttered.

"Mistress?" The first guard asked. I struggled to remember the name that matched the face. Was it Natton? Nallon? I would remember in time. "What should we do with that natrix's family?"

I glared at him. Pallon. That was his name. "Don't use that wretched language around me, guard Pallon. I don't appreciate modern slang." He bowed his head in apology.

"As for the family," I sighed, "Keep them under my protection." Pallon looked surprised. "Just because the family had a useless idiot for a husband and father doesn't mean Ganondorf should be able to rape the wife and sell the children for Gerudo slaves. They are still under my hand. Now leave."

Pallon bowed a third time and backed away from my seat in the corner. I watched the citizens of Castle Town drink more and more, getting drunk to forget their pains. I sipped at my own mead, shifting my gaze from table to table. In the corner to the left of my own, a rather old man was attempting to seduce a much younger woman without much success. At the bar, retired soldiers from before Ganondorf's time were chatting about the old days, remembering when there was free choice in Hyrule. And on the opposite side of the pub, there was a rather attractive young man. It took me a second glance to realize he was watching me.

I ignored it. I was often watched, especially after such incidents as the one tonight. Those wretches who attempted to bed me usually regretted the effort.

Draining the last of my mead, I slammed the frothy mug onto the table and raised myself from my seat. I had work to do in my room. Seeing as I needed a replacement for the man who was headed off towards the salt plains at that very moment, there was much to sort through. I had found out that morning that another of my financers had been assassinated the night before. Nothing out of the usual, but frustrating none the less.

I snapped my fingers and Pallon came to me. He escorted me to my chambers above the pub, a quieter place where I might actually get some work done. As we climbed the stairs, I tied my hair out of my face into a crude bun with a length of twine. I ordered him to leave the door that night, and guard something that actually needed protection.

Entering my room, my head was heavy with the thoughts of the night. I needed to find the Gerudo's ore mine. Their weapons were becoming a problem because they were better than my own. That simply wasn't acceptable.

I took a step towards the bed and stopped. Something was wrong. The room wasn't right…

"Come out, I already know you're there," I sighed, drawing a rapier slowly.

A figure emerged from a shadow in the corner of the room. He looked reasonably clean, so I assumed he was a Creant. _Castle dogs,_ I snarled in my head. But I looked below his left ear and saw only bare flesh, completely unmarked. Not a Creant? There were plenty who wanted me dead, but Ganondorf was the only one ambitious – and foolish – enough to try to capture me.

It was only after I looked at the naked hollow under his earlobe that I realized it was the same man who had been watching me in the pub earlier. Seeing him again, I noticed just how handsome he was. Blonde hair fell in thick locks around eyes as blue as the sky at Lake Hylia, an endless field of delphiniums. His skin was dark, worn, tan, and the hand that clutched the shining Gerudo blade was callused and scarred. He was taller than I by a good four of five inches, a rather irritating surprise. I hated looking up to my opponents. But none the less, he was rather attractive.

My lips curled up in a sultry smile. "Hello again."

He stared back at me with stern eyes. I could tell he would be challenging if it came to combat. While he waited, I wondered who in Hyrule he could be. We stared at each other, faces unchanging and our eyes burning. His eyes… why were they familiar? They stabbed at my soul and I felt some ancient yearning I had forgotten. There was some memory I just couldn't reach, my bloody fingers just couldn't grasp.

A million thoughts flew through my head, and I couldn't seem to focus on any single one. My eyes could not be torn from his, not even to look at his familiar green tunic or his lips, which were beginning to open. Even as I spoke, I kept my eyes set on his, our pupils wide due to the low light.

"Who are you and why are you here?" I asked. "You bear no crest on your jaw, yet here you stand with a weapon pointed towards me."

His brow knit together, confused. "You seem familiar." He echoed my own thoughts, and as his voice rang across the room – a voice that sent shivers down my spine – my heart stopped, stilling the blood in my body and freezing my soul.

---

I could not for the life of me remember who she was. But I knew I had seen her before. Something flicked in her eyes - eyes like a violet sunset – but I had no name for it. Her chin lifted, her eyes never leaving mine, and she said, "I repeat my question. Why are you here?" Her voice was like rain falling in the desert: unexpected, beautiful, and dangerous. She took a step forward, lifting her long sword higher in the air.

But it was not the same question. She didn't ask my name. Did she know me? Had we met? I know I had seen her before. But none the less, I answered her.

"I have been sent to recapture you. The Great King wants you."

She looked immensely irritated. Her perfect mouth twisted in disgust at the mention of Ganondorf. "Another of Ganondorf's aggravating pawns. I see his supply of Creants has run dry. I suppose the next logical step was to pluck innocent hopefuls out of the barracks, no?"

I was both shocked that she had called the King by name and annoyed that I had been referred to as a pawn. "I am merely doing my duty. The King gave me an order, I will follow through. Simple as that. I know better than to disobey him."

She laughed, a quick, cruel stab, and began walking around me, giving me a wide berth. She kicked her feet out straight in front of her, pointing her toes and placing them gracefully in front of her. Her eyes were set on each prolonged step. "Yes, and I presume you thought there might be a promotion in your future for my capture. Perhaps Ganondorf's nemesis could be traded for a Creant's tattoo? A high honor, I'm sure-"

"I have no desire to be in their ranks, thank you," I snapped quickly. "It is not my liking to parade about in arrogance and massacre entire villages simply to prove a point."

If she was surprised at my confession, she gave no indication of it. The woman simply stopped and sunk the tip of her rapier between the wooden floorboards at her side. She place on hand on her hip – her fingers were covered in dried blood – and stared at me intensely. Her hand wrinkled the blue fabric at her waist and was creeping towards the other rapier at her side, but I did not notice. I was too busy staring into her indigo eyes, bright orbs of passion, hate, pain.

"I once thought that myself," she said quietly. And, before I had time to think, she swung her blades and lunged at me.

---

He dodged me with amazing speed. I had not been counting on his exellent reflexes. He flicked his sword as he danced away from me and sliced he sleeve of my royal blue tunic. I growled in frustration and swung again, darting back and forth with lightning speed. He parried every stab, returning a few of his own in the process. I swiped at his waist and tried to give him some sort of injury, but he blocked my rapier and sliced at my face. I stepped back and snarled at him, pausing only to shoot him a look. His face was almost sarcastic. How very irritating.

I was getting to the point where I was just weary instead of angry. We shot blows back and forth, demolishing the room in the process. He knocked out an oil lamp, ripped the lace curtains, and somehow managed to tear up a wooden panel from the ground. I leapt up onto the bed in an attempt to gain some sort of advantage. I feigned to the left, the right, his thigh, and finally went in for his forearm. I was an inch away from his flesh, thrumming with adrenaline and blood, when his blade shoved mine away. Hair slipped out of the messy tangle I had knotted it up into earlier, and I could feel the wisps churning around my cheeks.

Finally, I swiped at his chest and cut a gap below the neck of his tunic. His dark skin showed through the tear, and I stood very still on the bed in my distraction. His skin looked worn, like it had seen lifetimes at work, in agony, in peril. I stared at it in fascination. It was only for a split second, but it was enough. Seeing an opportunity, he threw a backhanded drive at my legs with all his might. Acting before I had time to think, I flew from the mattress and away from his weapon. Unfortunately, I hadn't looked where I was going, and I broke through the pane of glass and sailed out the window.

I rolled as I hit the roof below and crouched on one knee. _Shit, _I thought, realizing I had lost one of my rapiers in the fall. Snapping my head around, I saw the knight standing on the opposite side of the shattered window. He grabbed the siding and deftly swung his weight through the open porthole. I pushed myself up, slip my blade back into its sheath, and sprinted along the slanted rooftop. I saw the edge of the roof but continued at full speed. And when I reached the edge, I soared.

---

She was fast. She flew along the rooftops, throwing her weight into every jump and flashing through the air. Her hair had fallen from its tie and it streaked behind her like Epona's mane. The girl was a dark cobalt blur against the black and grey sky. It was one of those rare nights where the clouds were thin enough to see a hint of the moon, a glowing outline. I dashed along behind her shadow, chasing an eagle that could not be contained. Every time I thought I had her, she dropped below my line of vision or disappeared to a roof two stories up, Goddesses know how.

Her feet danced in such with amazing skill. It was like watching a noble swirl in some sort of complicated ballet that took years to master. If I concentrated very hard, I could make out the difference between the two thick slippers, but I skid along when I wasn't paying attention to the slipping thatched roofs and shoddy shingles below my own boot.

The woman never once turned to face me. I couldn't tell how she was navigating the sea of houses. I feared the thin coverings on the slums would collapse under my weight at any moment, but not once did they cave. I was beginning to tire of the chase; the breath was heavy in my chest, and my throat was on fire. At long last, I sprinted onto a flat roof and swung around a window protruding out of the surface and I saw her.

She was standing a good twenty feet away from me, her breathing even and her hair spinning slowly around her face, brushing against her skin like secrets. A cut from the broken window's glass bordered her hairline and thin lines of blood ran over her face in a crimson spider web. Her rapier was in her left hand – she, too, was left handed – and she was staring at me with murder in her eyes.

And suddenly I was thirteen again, standing in a walled garden and staring at the most beautiful little girl I had ever seen. I figured she was one, maybe two years younger than I, and her hair was hidden under a veil. Her face was full of innocence and fear. She turned to me and said. "You came. You're finally here." The girl's voice was the first sunshine of spring upon my skin. I wanted it, I needed it. And then the guards took me away.

Eight years later, I gaped at the full grown woman before me. "Princess Zelda…"

A true look of surprise splattered across her face, and for a second, she forgot her need to kill me. Then the princess smiled, slow and cruel. Her tunic blossomed into a full canvas skirt, rustling against the ground in thick whispers. Her tresses braided themselves as she walked forward, pointing her blade at me. I recognized the dress, the voice, the face, but not the eyes. They had changed, evolved into some kind of horror in the past eight years. What happened to the princess renowned for kindness and wisdom? Surely wise monarchs didn't go leaping around the roofs of Castle Town in the dark of dusk. Nor did ladies smash men into walls.

She raised her blade even further. "Ah, so we _have _met. Yes, I am the princess, though perhaps not the girl you remember. Tell me, when was I introduced to a knight of the King?"

I was unable to answer because she had taken up our sword fight again. She slashed a wide arch to the left, a flowering butterfly sweep. I stepped back, but not before she sliced off a few stray hairs from my head. I parried, stabbing at her waist. The gutter was only a few feet behind me, and I'm sure her intent was to push me off the edge of the building.

Our swords slashed, a clashing of metal that screeched and crashed like thunder from the heavens. Pale light illuminated the edge of her face. The sort curves were set into hard lines and she swung and swung and swung, relentless and fierce. I spun about and blocked a high blow, faking back and forth. The air crackled with tension that was nearly tangible. We had to slice through it to reach our opponent, cutting it into pieces only to have it reform instantly. Dodging another of her clever streaking moves by inches, I side stepped around her and slid my sword through a layer of her skirt. She frowned at me as she hit from side to side.

"Now _that _is irritating," she huffed, and without pause, the tear sewed itself back together perfectly. The princess giggled, grinning at me maliciously. I was dumbstruck, - magic? - and she took the chance to cut a broad stripe across my chest. I fell back wards and almost slipped off the roof, but I used all my strength to push against the surface below me and fling myself backwards.

I really hoped there was a roof behind me.

I landed on my back with a thud, and I cringed in pain. Seconds later, and pair of feet landed at my side, lithe and graceful. Her knees bent upon impact, and she stood with clenched fists at her waist. She stared down at me, eyes ablaze with fervor. "Why can't I finish you?" she yelled, and was about to thrust her blade into me when I swung my sword at her feet. She jumped and rolled to the side. The roof we were on was considerably smaller than our previous arena, and there was a gushing sound in the distance…

The river.

The runoff from the Zora's River wrapped around the southern border of Castle Town. We couldn't be on the guard tower. That was the only place where we could possibly fall into the river. I rolled on my side over to the edge and, sure enough, a growling water coursed below us. It ran over itself, each wave of icy water desperate to override the next.

I looked up when I felt the Princess Zelda's foot on my chest. She smiled again, simply intending to push me off the edge and be rid of me.

Under normal circumstances, I would have never done something so low and yellow-bellied. But I was in complete desperation. The Princess of Hyrule was about to kick me into a raging river where I would drown. It wasn't the drop that scared me; it was a fifty foot drop, but once I had fallen from a cliff side on Death Mountain and survived after a week of recuperation in a healing spring. But that current scared me. And I did not feel like dying.

So I punched Princess Zelda in the gut.

---

He punched me in the stomach! It didn't hurt very much, but none the less, I was angry. I could taste anger and bile in my throat, and I looked with rage as the knight spun to his feet and grabbed his sword. I was doubled over in surprise when his sword fell through the air and nearly into my shoulder. I flicked my blade back. We dueled, an almost even match. Circling around on top of the guard tower, I waited until his back was to the river.

Then I jumped into the air, rapier held over my head, and brought it down upon him as hard as I possibly could. It jarred both of my arms in full and sent a vicious shockwave through my body. My blade snapped against his, breaking off at the hilts. The useless chunks of metal clattered to the ground. He stumbled backwards, a similar wave of red pain flowing through his own body.

I quickly grabbed the knife that still remained in my pocket and grabbed the knight by the tunic. I brought his face up to my own, our noses less than an in away from each other. His breath was hot on my face, summer air in the perpetual, everlasting winter of Castle Town. Feeling it made me long to escape to the valley that the Zora's River cut through, slicing around plateaus and pouring through canyons like darting flocks of birds.

I held the knight to me, his chest rising and falling with my own. We both took sharp, rasping breaths. My knife was held at his pulsing jaw, directly below the left ear. "So," I hummed, suddenly gripped by a tight emotion. "You don't want to be a Creant?"

He looked directly back at me, his eyes and breathing suddenly steady. He answered with upmost certainty. "No." It was stern.

I smiled. "I will ensure that never happens," And with that, I slashed three shallow lines below his ear, forming what could just pass for a triangle. He cried out at my unexpected branding. His scream of pain ripped through me like a million knives stabbing my body all at once, cold air wrapping around my skin and freezing my blood.

Before I could think twice, I threw him from the edge of the tower to plummet into the frothy depths of the river. I caught a flash of his eyes as he went down, something along the lines of remorse. And then I saw something else, something I hadn't been planning on.

His hand shot out, and instinct, and grabbed my wrist, pulling me down with him. We fell through the air, my eyes wide in shock. As we fell, those millions of thoughts I had felt earlier came back. And like before, I couldn't wrap my mind around any single one. But as we plummeted, I was aware of one thing: the knight was holding me. His arms were wrapped around my body, one hand curled over the back of my head. His chest was warm against my cheek. As it happened, for some reason, my fingers curled into his earthen tunic, and I felt warm. I felt something familiar.

And that's when we hit the water.

---

The ice was like no other sensation. It ripped my body into a million tiny pieces, and I just didn't care enough to try to fit them back together. But then I remembered she was in my arms, tight, and we were sinking. She was kicking and struggling. So I, too, kicked towards what I figured was the surface. Left was down, right was backwards. I was utterly confused, and my chest was burning, but I kicked. I held her hand in mine, even though she tried to tear away from me. Finally I broke the surface and I dragged her up with me. I held her as I swam, trying to find something solid I could cling to.

Somehow the Princess managed to reach shore before me, and even more shocking was that she pulled me up onto the rocks. Once I crawled up onto the solid ground, I was about ready to gasp and get all the fresh air I could; but a clammy hand – the princess's – slapped across my mouth so I could hardly breathe. I thrashed about in an attempt to free myself from her grip, but she punched my shoulder and hissed, "_Shut up, Goddesses dammit! Listen!" _

I turned my head to where she was pointing and saw a small huddle of Gerudo women. They were talking in low voices, and I strained my ears to hear.

"…don't know why he needs it so badly, really…"

"…searching for ages…"

"…already plenty powerful…"

"That is ridiculous," A voice said clearly over the rest. "There is no such thing as too much power. And with this, the Lord would practically be a _god!_"

The rest of the voices fell silent. Another piped up after the comment. "But unless he captures that forsaken Princess, the Lord will never get the Ocarina. And the leaders of the other races refuse to cooperate and hand over their share of power. How will he get this great power? He's already burned part of the Kokiri Forest and they still claim they don't have the Kokiri Emerald."

I was enraged. Never in my entire life had I been so angry. Burn Kokiri Forest!? That was outrageous! The spirits would die, and the entirety of Hyrule's natural cycle would collapse. The princess held me down so I didn't try to attack the Gerudo women; I didn't care that there were almost a dozen of them, or that I was soaking wet, or even that I no longer had a weapon. I just wanted to hurt them.

"Shut up!" the princess grunted. "I need to know what they're doing!" And then she hit me over the head so hard, I fell to the ground, unable to move.

"What was that?" The lead Gerudo asked. They looked around, but couldn't see us along the banks of the river.

"That's not important," The second Gerudo said, the one who had challenged the first. "What matters is that the Lord is aiming for something impossible. He doesn't even know where the Ocarina of time is, even if he could take all the Spiritual Stones by force."

A loud _smack! _rang from the clearing where the Gerudo stood. The leader had hit the guard who continued to criticize Ganondorf's plans. "You will behave!" Yelled the leader. But even after the warning, the leader still drew her blade and ran the guard through. "Anyone else have questions? Doubts?" she whispered. The guards didn't even breathe.

"Good." The leader placed her sword back at her hip and began to walk from the clearing. "Leave the corpse. We can blame it on one of the Noble Houses."

As the guards left, the princess cursed under her breathe. "Dammit," she swore. "Ganondorf's trying to break into the Sacred Realm."

* * *

**Tada. Two weeks of work. Special Thanks goes out to Actual-Dionysius for honest construntive critisism and to Mikure since I'm a horrible speller. I'm considering having someone edit these before they get posted....any volunteers? **

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

**Ugh, I am so sorry that this took so long. The first three times I wrote this it was all spaghetti western with long meaningful stares and no action. But here we are! Thank you AD, my editor, and thanks to the Cardigans, for being awesome and providing perfect music. I hope this was worth the wait.**

* * *

Chapter 5

_She never cries at the sight of the knife. Nor the pain of what he does in the midnight hours. The routine, that horrid dance through which she so often steps, is part of her life. She only looks forward to the day, when it will be over. With the sun's ascension there is relief, but also the knowledge that it will all begin again with its fall. No matter how many times it climbs the sky's ceiling, the sun will always fall._

_ And she will always have his marks. _

_---_

As I dragged myself from the icy banks in the fresh dawn, I remembered why I hated petticoats. And corsets. And satin. And every other piece of ridiculous apparel found in court among the Nobles. But I was too tired to change my attire magically. The strain would be far more than I could handle, and I was only just keeping up my usual charms.

Quickly, I removed my gloves and ran my fingers over my body checking for sprains, cuts and breaks. My chest drew sharp breath at a deep wound in my elbow I hadn't anticipated. Beyond that, there was very little that I didn't expect; only a wide but shallow gash bled at my hairline on my right temple caught me by surprise. Watery blood began to seep into the open air. A few bruises were scattered across my body from the many falls and bashing…with the Knight…

I spun around and grabbed for my scabbards, but my weapons were lost and broken. The knight stood with a dagger pointed at my neck.

We stared at each other for a brief eternity. The moments were black and white, and set out so neatly before me I could not deny them: I could die, or I could live. I cursed myself for being so careless. I had been so worried about the Gerudos' conversation and checking myself for the injuries that – Farore only knows how – I forgot about my current adversary. His head was tilted vaguely as if daring me to move. Somehow his gaze was both questioning and accusing; mine was solid and impenetrable. My heart didn't seem to beat during those moments. I was conscious of the naked blade pointed at my bare throat, but my attention was set on possibilities, not fear. Those loyal to Ganondorf would never go against his word. In fact, _no_ one would ever go against his word and live to boast of it. But this man seemed to disregard his King. Fool.

I was so caught up in my own thoughts that his voice startled me.

"What do you mean." Despite the phrasing, it sounded more like a demand than a proper question. The knight was looking at me as if he wasn't sure of his actions. His heart didn't seem to be in what he was doing, and he looked a little as if there were words he just couldn't quite formulate in the back of his head.

I blinked in confusion as I processed his words. What did I mea-

"Why is Ganondorf trying to break into the Sacred Realm." Just as unsure.

I cursed myself again for voicing my thoughts earlier. Even if this knight wasn't loyal, he probably wasn't stupid enough to deny Ganondorf information he had been sent to obtain. I had no weapon, no escape route, and no idea what to do. My heart rate quickened just the slightest bit; not enough to start panting, but more than I liked. He would probably die if he defied Ganondorf. Was I nervous? I was never nervous. What did I care of his life?

At the moment, I should have been concerned with my own.

I lifted my hand to the red seeping into my rose gold tresses. My fingers came away rose as well. A brief image of the gardens I strolled through in my youth swirled in front of my eyes. Wavered. It was gone.

I drew the pads of my fingers across the flat edge of his blade, leaving a streak of crimson in their wake. Barely moving my lips, I uttered a quick spell – simple, practically no energy lost, but effective – that would leave the mark forever. Needless, since I had already left a scar in his flesh, but I loved to spread blood in my path.

I smiled. "You win." The knight looked mildly surprised at my answer. His eyes had been tracing my fingers as they stained his knife, but I now held his gaze. "I dropped my guard. My life is now in your hands. Your left palm, particularly. What now, Knight?" His brow was drawn as I leaned so the point was an uncertain breath away from my demise. "What now?"

"Tell me what I need to know." He responded. His voice had gained a steel edge, and I suddenly regretted positioning my bare skin so close to the blade. "Tell me, and you live."

I laughed back at him, careful to move my neck as little as possible. Metal didn't have to cut deep into a throat to kill. "You think I fear death? You think my life means something? Hardly. I only give a damn about one thing in this world, and it certainly isn't the next." I raised my hand to his cheek, hovering beside it, and expected him to flinch.

"You lie."

I dropped my palm at his audacity.

"What?" I asked stupidly.

"You're lying. You do fear death. You fear judgment and…and something else that I can't place. I don't know why you're being bold, Highness, but it won't end well for you."

"Then finish this!" I snapped. "I will tell you nothing, and this standoff will end only when that knife finds relief in my flesh. Finish this, and kill m-"

"I don't want to kill you!" he yelled with his eyes ablaze.

I shut up.

"I don't want to kill you, and you don't want to die, and all I want is my Din forsaken freedom!" I watched him as storms crashed in his Lake Hylia eyes, nostrils flaring. "Ganondorf, he is the common enemy – not just to the two of us, but to all of Hyrule! He is the cause of the rot that is sinking into our home. I once loved life, and I had a future. I have seen people, friends, the closest thing I had to family tortured and raped and murdered. A disease eats away at our lives, and soon my soul will hold nothing but ashes from the pillaging and the death. And you! You show _no_ remorse. In your eyes I see no attachment to this land of yours, the land that you would have ruled had you not run away or been turned out or whichever story may be true! You may have been our savior. Perhaps not, but I doubt it could be worse than this Hell. Don't you remember what it was like before? When trade was fair and people had freedom and no one had ever heard of a Creant? Once, when our lives weren't dictated and abused by the Nobles, though I doubt they do anything but live richly and praise Ganondorf. Lake Hylia was filled with clear water and not that sludge. Few lived in such fear as they do now. The Zoras and Gorons looked to us as friends and Kakariko was safe. And they weren't burning the Kokiri's…"

His wild fervor sobered. Calm acceptance settled over his words. "Before, something like peace had settled over the land, you were safe, and all the races more or less agreed. Now…" His left arm, knife in hand, swept around the clearing. Scorched trees and the Gerudo's dead body were our only company. "Now we have sunken into chaos. My hands are shackled to this palace of misery behind me, and my freedom is as much a myth as your existence is. People are slaughtered like livestock. Slums and orphanages are overflowing, and those people are the lucky ones. How often do you walk through the streets? Not the streets filled with bars and assassins. All you will find there is a host of prostitutes and con-men. The streets where people live…filled with bodies in the cold…" He composed himself and looked wearily to me. "And you…"

Tired eyes were locked on my face as his shoulders heaved up and down. There was something so familiar in that pointed nose, the planes of his face, the slack panting mouth, and eyes pressed into regret and pity…So familiar.

"This…this is no way to finish our distress and agony, and neither of us need lose our life this night."

As he concluded his speech, and the luminous sliver of a dying moon escaped the clouds, I remembered his face, voice, designs. I remembered.

---

On Lon Lon Ranch, all those weary years ago, the farm girl and I would sing old folk songs to each other as we worked. My voice had broken early at twelve, but it complemented Malon's flawlessly. Together, our harmonies and melodies, male and female, twisted and plummeted in unintentional perfection. Sometimes, as the sun dipped below the horizon and stained the clouds with light wine, all the animals would stop and raise their heads to listen.

_In the light of last December, when snow was sparse as hope,_

Our voices rang above the rooftops.

_The fiercely burning ember that lit her violet eyes died._

The noise around us ceased.

_Warm and tender was the heart that she broke, _

The wind brushed our cheeks in gentle encouragement.

_Yet she couldn't remember past what she strove to hide._

And then the world was quiet, quiet and waiting.

---

Impossible. There was no way that this man, who had dropped his knife hand from my pulsing throat, was the same. The image of the past, a face lit by a dying camp fire in the winter wind of Hyrule Field, flashed and faded like the memory of my childhood garden.

I didn't want to kill him. Not at the moment, at least. In that moment, I wanted nothing more but to flee the clearing and run, run to a forest not so far from here. I wanted to run to a pleasant past, one of few fond memories I could cling to. But it wasn't an option.

I swallowed my doubts and history as I lifted my right hand once again. As I placed my fingers beneath his left ear to the fresh scar, his fresh blood, he hardly even flinched.

Link hardly even flinched.

"Then I guess," I said quietly as I stepped backwards. "That we should finish this." I bent down to the Gerudo's limp body and slid the two swords from her hips. Poor girl. She actually had some sense. Holding the two blades up to Link, I could feel his apprehension. But I flipped the sword in my right hand in the air, twirled it about, and held the hilt to my opponent.

Still hesitant, he lightly grasped the weapon as I released it. I took a step back, place my right arm behind my back, and saluted vaguely him with my blade. He did the same.

Thus we began.

This battle started more solemnly than the first. Our steps were precise, but not calculated; our strikes anticipated, but not predictable; our eyes wary, but not anxious. We circled each other, and as time progressed, our form grew less and less structured. The clash of sturdy Gerudo metal rung through the air and down our spines. After the first hour, we both began to feel the toll of our night's struggles. We each had our injuries, though perhaps his more severe, and my left arm was screaming for me to switch blade hands. I grit my teeth and ignored the longing for relief. There was no time to heal myself, and I would not be the first to call for a rest. I may have trusted this Knight in the past, but it had been years. And this battle was starting to make me angry. All this time, all this history, and why couldn't I beat him! Damnit! I started striking faster, with less care after the second hour. By the time the sun was breathing over the eastern mountains, I was furious, no longer caring how many nights I had spent across a campfire from this man. I no longer remembered once craving his company. Right then, all that mattered was striking him down.

I could feel the beads of sweat sliding down the small of my back. Hair that had flown free only hours ago was matted against my face with perspiration. We both had our right hands angled on the flat side of the blade now for the extra support. Every now and then, one of us would stumble, and the other would slice clothing. My dress was covered in tears, his belt of effects lay scattered on the ground, and our hands and feet were dressed with fresh blisters.

It was well into the third hour that I saw my chance. His right foot was always just a little slower than the left, and I saw my chance when he began to dodge a clumsy strike of mine. I dipped, I stabbed –

And the edge of his sword lodged itself into my injured elbow.

I dropped my weapon and cried out in agony. Crumpled on the ground, I cradled my elbow and whispered pointlessly to no one but myself. Link circled me as I tried to cast a spell, tried to heal myself. Fresh blood dripped to the ground below. The wound was hardly fatal, but I was crippled for the time being. Through my tangled hair and sweat and blood, I looked up to him.

"You've been waiting, haven't you," I panted, suddenly choking on bile and spit. "You could have taken me down hours ago." He was walking around me in a circle with his sword pointed at the ground.

He nodded soberly. "But you would have healed yourself, no?" Link placed his sword on the ground and kneeled next to me. I tried to scoot away, but the effort was too much. I collapsed again and lay with my forehead in the bloody dirt. _This is it, _I thought to myself as blood and soil filled my mouth and caked my lips. _Now I am going to die. I am going to Hell, and Ganondorf will burn this Kingdom to ashes. _

Suddenly a pair of strong hands was on my shoulders, flipping me over. Link was reaching for my elbow, surely to render it useless. "No, no please," I whispered, barely audible. I was being pathetic, but I was too tired to care.

With the loss of blood, my head began to cloud over. My injuries began to fade, and I blessed the Goddesses for taking my pathetic life away from me. The eternal judgment was worth these few moments of relief.

About then, I blacked out.

_----_

It is the first time I have ever seen him. I duck behind a pear tree silently, frustrated and confused. I've been coming to this hilltop, so well concealed by the surrounding mountains and thick vegetation, since I turned thirteen, two years before. Never have I seen another soul here. It is too dark to distinguish any features, though I assume the shape is a male. Dying embers light his cloak. His face is hidden, and he hums quietly to his chestnut mare.

Tucking my rags tight around my face, I creep behind a thick tree and begin to grab for branches. I climb higher as I watch him chew on month old bread and lean against a fallen tree trunk. Why is he here? This clearing is far south of the borders of Castle Town and Kakariko, and no citizen in their right mind would venture out here. I am irritated by his presence, and can think of no decent way to be rid of him without killing. Though it is not beyond my character, I am weary of death. The Eastern Wars rage on, and I have felled my fair share of warriors. Though I am neutral for the time and simply fight to tip the scale where I like it, death does not seem like the appropriate decision right now.

I am so caught up in my own thoughts that I do not notice the stranger removing a dust colored flute from his supplies. His steed nuzzles him affectionately as he tests out a three note tune. I am just settling into a comfortable position – it seems I will have to out wait this stranger – when a familiar folk song drifts through the tree branches.

I come to a halt, and it seems as if the rest of the world does as well. I try to pin down the time and place I have heard it when the memory dives into my head in a rush of sound and colors.

My father's voice was deeper than mine will ever be, and the lyrics settled softly over me as I drifted to sleep in his lap. It was one of the very few times I ever spent alone with my father.

_In the light of last December, when snow was sparse as hope,_

I shut my eyes in the pain of my past life. My father the King, singing to his sleeping daughter. As the stranger in the clearing plays on, I sing softly beneath my breath. I have never given a thought to the lyrics before, but now they ring a little too true for comfort. I cannot ignore the cruel similarities.

"_Yet she couldn't remember past what she strove to hide_…"

"Who's there?" the stranger calls out in alarm. I jump, but am silent as I peer down on him. He must have stood abruptly, for his flute – an ocarina, I remember it's called – is at his feet and his hood has dropped back. I barely have time to process his handsome features and estimate him to be roughly my age before he starts to move towards me. Never thinking that he was simply picking up his ocarina, I flee the hilltop. But I will return. We both will.

---

The Princess awoke when she rolled onto her elbow and shrieked out in pain. I looked over from my fire as the disoriented Zelda sat up and massaged her injury. She was unsettled and, judging by her expression, didn't remember our brawl until her eyes fell upon my face. Snarling, she tried to leap up and fight.

She promptly fell over.

After prodding the pot hovering over my fire, I stood, dusted off my knees, and walked over to the Princess to check her bandages. I had done my best to doctor her while she was unconscious, but she could simply heal herself when she had recovered some strength. She sneered at me as I knelt, but permitted me to check the bloody scrapes beneath her shoddy sling. I cleaned her elbow with warm water, and she didn't even flinch when she looked down at the two-inch-deep gash in her joint. I had torn the muscle a little more than intended when I crippled her, but I hadn't expected her to jerk her arm like that. The Princess watched my fingers working over flesh and fabric and never once looked at my face.

"Do you know what you're doing, Knight?" She said calmly as I brushed her skin.

"Indeed." I answered. "I have been stationed all over Hyrule, and far outside of it. I have seen my fair share of hopeless patients before, and you hardly match up to the victims of Gano-" I paused, redirecting my thoughts. "Of the cruel winters in the East. People start to freeze and fight each other for food and-"

"I know," she said. I looked at her again, but found no response in her downturned face.

"But Kakariko is beautiful in the spring." Her face softened as I spoke. "The people appreciate sunshine and saplings so much more for their troubles. They manage through bitter circumstances just to find miracles of green and food when the snow melts."

"Perhaps they are defined by the Hell they face." the princess suggested, bleak but pensive.

"Or perhaps they are defined by how they react to their tragedies, and their ability to rebuild. Focusing on past trials and horrors will merely drive you insane. All you can do is pick up the pieces of what was before and make the best of the remnants. No other options will end in peace."

She sighed. "That may be true, Knight, but that was not what I was asking."

I felt the wrinkles appear between my eyes in confusion until I remembered what had started our conversation. _Do you know what you're doing? _Perhaps the question wasn't referring to my medical experience. I was dealing with a person – with a Princess – assumed to be dead. And Ganondorf had sent me out to capture and return her to his hands. He surely wouldn't return her to power. That only left imprisonment or, if she was lucky, her death. Goddesses only know what merciless ideas the Creants would come up with to play with her, to use this beautiful woman to satisfy their…desires.

As my mind slipped over these thoughts, it finally ended on the one I had been avoiding since I recognized the Princess on the rooftop: Ganondorf would kill me whether I returned or not. And if, by some chance, I managed to escape his dark, bloodstained fingers, I would probably meet my end at whatever weapon Zelda next obtained. My fate had been closed and shut tightly with the Creants' wax signet rings. Which is why I told the Princess that I was going to die.

"Clearly," she was matter-of-fact, "Ganondorf cannot have a renegade soldier such as you running around knowing about the Princess and her 'unsolved' disappearance. It is a hindrance to his reign, his conquests in the East, which are steadily stretching south towards your beloved homeland of Kokiri Forest, and if the Hylians had that single spark of hope, the knowledge that their Princess is still breathing, then there would be no end to our 'benevolent' King's wrath." Violet eyes still fell heavily on my fingers dressing her wound. She would not have the energy to heal herself for a long time. "You," she stated, "are going to die because of me."

I did not speak, and the question that was in both our minds was in the heavy silence between us. _Is it worth it?_ Unanswered inquiries settled over my fingers like snow. My thoughts drifted away to the green forests of my youth, and red flashes of death consumed the trees, so passive in their destruction.

Suddenly, while I was tying a knot, the Princess said, "You have seen War."

My eyes darted up to hers, but that violet gaze was set on my stilled hands. War. Clearly she did not mean just any war. _The _Wars. The Wars of our gracious lord, King Ganondorf. Brutal, pointless, inhuman warfare waged against friendly neighboring countries for years on end. I could feel the Princess's eyes burning hot on my motionless hands. I gradually began to work again. "Yes." I answered. No one who lives through War wishes to remember. "Yes, I have. Why do you say so?"

"You have the concentration of a man who has seen enough to let the odds crush any real hope that his friends will survive. And for that unfortunate reality, you probably just stopped making friends and stood by yourself." Still watching me work.

Now I stopped completely. I stared at her until I could tell she was just barely keeping her eyes on my hands. My hands fell to my lap, but she was still looking at her elbow. "Yes." I replied quietly. "But so have you." The corner of her mouth twitched.

"Why do you say so?" she echoed in an almost inaudible whisper. I took a single finger and lifted her chin so it was level to mine. Yet she still would not look at me.

"Because none save those who have been there could describe it so aptly. You have killed, and saved, and wondered why you're the one who survived instead of the person beside you. No one else could know." Her brows were drawn as I spoke.

"Zelda." And just with that, she looked at me, years of War and blood and neglect hardened into her eyes, her face, her soul. Part of her was War, but part was a world I had never known. Part was even worse. "No one else could know," she said, hard as her past and her willpower.

I was the first to look away, but it was not for weakness or fear; her arm still needed attention. With a flourish of bandages and balm, I finished working on her and stood up. "That's not entirely true, you know," I said to the woman still perched on the ground in her ripped pink silk. She looked up in confusion. "I did have friends. One friend."

I hadn't the slightest notion of what the Princess was thinking as she looked at me, and then the rising sun. "And what was this one friend like?"

I moved to my pack and began to gather my scattered belongings from the ground. "He was wise, young, and a fierce warrior. I never could get a straight answer out of him, and he was the most elusive soul I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Sharp wit, good mind, but twisted soul. Whatever past he had suffered was more than I could imagine." I glanced at the Princess, but her usual subtle smoldering mask of anger was in place. I continued. "Regardless, he was a good friend, and he knew all my fears. I could never tell why he fought in the Eastern Wars, but he saved me many a time, as I saved him. But even through all that, I don't even think I knew his real name. I don't think he ever really trusted me-"

"How would you know?" The Princess leapt up and stepped towards me. "If you didn't even know your friend's real name, how can you make any assumptions about trust?" I bowed my head as she calmed herself, and continued to pick up my effects. As I bent over to grab a parcel in soft grey cloth, a glint of green shone through the morning air and flashed into our eyes. Before I had time to think, my fingertips were empty, and the Princess held the bundle in her palm. "Don't-" I began, but it was too late; she had pulled the fabric away to reveal a shining emerald wired with gold. The linen separated her flesh from the stone, and the jewel rested like air in her hand.

"Where," she gasped incredulously, "did you get this?"

"Return that immediately," I growled and began to rise above her. She darted away from me and looked both furious and awed with her watery stare. Since the night before, for the first time, she looked unsure of herself. I had somehow managed to unravel her concrete plans.

"Do you have _any _idea what this is?" she asked.

"It is a gift from my home, and it means the world to me. Return it. Now."

"This," said the Princess, seeming to find my response inadequate. "is the reason your home is reduced to ashes."

The world was over. It must have been, for trees and cliff sides were crashing around me, above me, and finally onto me. Not one coherent thought could form in my head. I'm sure my face lost all expression. I was destroying my homeland, the sheltered world that housed my immortal friends, without even knowing it. At last the words came to me. At last my mouth was filled with thoughts.

"I must take it to Ganondorf."

The Princess looked horrified. "What? No! You shall do no such thing!" She tried to leap away as I advanced on her, but the blood loss and fatigue made her movements unsure and slow. I had the emerald back in no time, and she was scampering for it again.

"You selfish bastard! Do you have any idea what Ganondorf will do to you and the rest of Hyrule if he gets that? The Ocarina is already under his disgusting nose, and it's only a matter of time until he finds it." The Princess rambled on, but I didn't know what she was talking about.

"**Wait!**" She shouted at the top of her lungs. I stopped and turned to look at her. "That is what the Gerudo were talking about, and if you don't listen to me, Ganondorf will be unstoppable."

I looked at my feet, at the same boots I'd had for the last four years. Worn and tired, but still whole. Clouds had begun to shield our eyes from the sun as I looked back up to the Princess. "Tell me."

She sighed in relief and regained her stoic composure. "It begins," she looked at the emerald in my hand. "With the Triforce."

---

These were legends that were familiar to me. It was the way the Princess took every word so seriously and the way each myth – or maybe each piece of history – wove itself in with the others that really made me listen. Holy gems and magic ocarinas, the Temple of Time and the Sacred Realm, and, above all, the Triforce. Wisdom, Courage, and Power. The ability to grant any heart's desire and rule over everything. I can see why Ganondorf wanted his desert hands on the Sacred Triangles. But I myself just wanted to cling to the memories of a simple life, with simple pleasures, like spring breezes and fishing at an untainted Lake Hylia.

When the Princess had finished her tale, I let the details sink into my mind, rearranging what I had considered fact and fable. After I had gathered up my concerns and all my immediate questions had been answered, I asked all that remained.

"What do we do now?"

The Princess smiled. "Now," her previous wickedness seeping back into her behavior, "We break into Hyrule castle."

---

I thought that Epona would surely give me away when she saw me. Link must have been tired, for he merely remarked "She seems to have taken to you rather quickly," as she nuzzled my back and nipped at my shoulders. I ignored the comment and moved on to planning. Link had not believed me when I told him that we needed to get into Ganondorf's lair, and it took quite a bit of convincing on my part. I couldn't tell him the actual reason we were invading the castle walls, but he had agreed, Goddesses only knew why.

First we had to steal from a citizen's house, for it would have been impossible for me to get into the castle in the torn gown that hung heavy and hulking from my body. I took care to steal from the home of a wealthy soul. The poor and the wretched had enough problems to deal with without their clothes disappearing to a rebel princess.

Link and I tacked Epona far from the castle walls and crept quietly through the streets. It was midday by the time we had reached the castle entrance.

"I doubt our King will just welcome you back with open arms at the gate, Majesty." Link had remarked as we made our way in broad daylight to the den of my enemy.

"Don't call me Majesty. And I know what I am doing." I replied shortly.

He was quiet once we reached the vines on the rock wall near the gate, near a guard who hoped against hope that his Lord and Master would see the potential in him and bless him with a tattoo below his left ear. I managed to crawl up the wall without using my left arm too much, and the pain was not much more intense than prior to scaling the wall. Link pulled his weight up the cliff with ease, and we set off to sneak past guards.

We wove past them, scaled another wall, and trenched along the inner moat until we reached a slight hole in a nearly hidden wall. Link, under my instruction, did his best to move the wooden crates nearby to my specifications quietly. He did not, however, listen to me when he told me we had to jump across the moat. "This is no time for petty jokes," he said. I hissed at him and explained that this was the only way in, and any other entrance would just be like turning ourselves in to Ganondorf. Finally he complied. Effortlessly he flew across the raging water, caught the ledge, and swung himself up onto the stone shelf.

"Alright," I warned. "Now catch me."

He looked horrified and annoyed at the same time. "That is absurd! I can't catch you. Can you even jump that far? Certainly you mu-" Link was cut off, however, as I barreled across the courtyard and leapt wildly into the air. I was liberated for the second I was suspended in the air. Ganondorf and the Triforce and the fate of Hyrule all melted into the wind and I was free.

And then I slammed into Link at full speed.

Cursing colorfully, he stumbled back with the little room he had. He had taken most of the landing force for me, and I hadn't landed on my left arm, which was a success. Link glared at me as I akwardly removed myself from his arms and quietly motioned at the small blemish in the wall. Nudging the stones with my boot, I revealed a passage, and I led the way to our answers and possibly our defeat.

More guards awaited us on the opposite side of the wall, but we evaded them behind the various shrubberies dotted around the garden. Quickly I explained to Link that our destination was two floors on top of us, in the eastern wing. "The only place that we will run into any trouble" I whispered "Is the archive room that we must pass. It is heavily guarded, but during the sun's highest hour, it is less crowded."

"What do you intend to do when we get there?" Link asked as we began to move again. I remained silent, for I had no answer.

An hour later, we had been able to rush up two flights of stairs and knock out a few guards on our way with arrows and various other tools. The fewer guards we took out, the better. A trail of unconscious bodies was not as inconspicuous as what I had hoped. Peering around the stone corner, I saw a dozen intermediate soldiers standing watch in the narrow passageway. Two others were with them, and judging by their bored expressions, I assumed they were Creants. A flash of black ink beneath an ear confirmed my suspicions.

"Princess." I glared at Link, but his expression was unchanged. "What are we to do now that we are here?" I tried to think quickly, but my lack of a plan was evident in the silence that followed. He looked furious, but I smacked my palm over his mouth silently.

"Alright," I whispered. "There is a winding stairwell directly beyond the archive room. Though this archive is much dingier than the public one – not that Ganondorf receives many friendly guests to tour his castle – this room contains every important document pertaining to the true history of Hyrule, Ganondorf's illegitimate rule, and many other things that would best be burned by him, but have charms protecting them. There are two Creants between us and the stairs, and they are more dangerous than the twelve soldiers. They shall prove to be a difficulty. The stairwell beyond has a heavy door on it, and once we are on the other side, we shall be fine. Until then, we are going to need to improvise a little."

Link still looked annoyed. "Improvise?"

I smiled and snapped my fingers. At the end of the hall farthest from us, a piece of armor clattered clumsily. After exchanging a few glances, five soldiers wandered down the way. I dropped another magic sound down the hall, and a very irritated looking Creant stomped down the hall after barking a few useless orders that simply cemented his authority to the remaining guards. I nodded at Link, and he drew an arrow from his quiver and shot it at a guard's head. It clanked against a helmet, and the man fell to the ground. Another fell next to him as Link's second arrow found his armor. There was no more point in covering ourselves, so I leapt from our hiding place and brandished my Gerudo sword wildly. I smacked two more guards out of my way with mirrored sweeps of my blade, and stepped to a third. He and the guard next to him were better prepared than the first four, but I tripped one and bashed his helmet in before landing a wide kick against the head of the other. Link had taken down the last guard by stabbing an arrow in his elbow – mine ached at the sight – and, before the others could regain their senses enough to stand, had progressed to the remaining Creant. Their blades were flashes of silver, and though the Creant was clearly trained better than Link, he did not possess as much natural skill. As they dueled I flew to the large heavy door blocking the stairwell before the other guards could return.

The locks were as complicated they had been all those years ago, and I found a handful of new charms binding the wood to its frame. I had only managed to unknot half of the magic bonds when I turned my head and saw the Creant pushing Link back into the ancient archive chamber. Panicked, I fell to the unconscious form of a soldier, grabbed his knife, and hastily threw it at the Creant. It flew between Link and his opponent, and Ganondorf's slobbering mutt was so put off by the unexpected – typical of Creants – that he could do nothing but stand dazed for a breath or two. It was all Link needed to dart from the situation and try to regain the upper hand.

Suddenly I heard the swish of metal through the air behind me, and I rolled blindly away. The sound of steel on stone sent sparks into the air as I regained my weapon, spun around, and slashed my sword down upon the form behind me. The soldier fell on top of his comrade. These recruits had done no true evil; they had probably enlisted in the army to keep from starving, and they were simply following orders. I wished them no ill will. My sword parried with two others as Link felled soldiers left and right.

"Link!" His gaze snapped to mine as he continued to block clumsy blows. "I need to get the door!" He nodded, elbowed the two he had been fighting in the face, and sprinted to cover my back. I was unraveling enchantments as quickly as I could, picking at their sources and retying others in one's place, but I seemed to be making little progress. Thin lines of tedious sweat ran down my temples as I worked. Frustrated, I slammed my fists against the lock. It jingled in submission, but it was still locked.

One enchantment. There was one that was holding all the others in place, and it was hidden cleverly among the insignificant tangles of charms that stood in my way. If I could only pull at the right thread, utter the right word, and everything would fall into place. I almost had it, I was sure it was right under my fingertips-

"Zelda!"

I turned, and a colossal double sided axe almost landed between my eyes. Link appeared from nowhere to block the blow. The last of our conscious opponents, the short-tempered Creant, had his bare hands wrapped around the weapon that had almost cleaved my skull, and the blonde was all that stood between us. Link held his sword above his head, parallel to the floor, and he was only barely keeping the enemy's weapon from slicing us to ribbons. Thinking quickly, I grabbed an arrow of Link's in each palm and stabbed them full force into the backs of Creant's hands. He screamed in agony, and Link threw him off, slicing something as he went. Without giving the incident a second thought, I turned back to the door, tugged at that one point of magic, and the rest went tumbling out into my hands. I grabbed the semiconscious and still furious Creant's axe and slammed the blade into the manual lock. It fell from the heavy door, and I hurried inside. "Come!" I shouted, and Link fell in rapid step behind me. Casting a brief spell to block the hallway for the next few minutes, we slammed the door behind us. It was not until we reached the top of the stairs that I could easily breathe. I looked at Link seriously, hoping he felt both my gratitude and exhaustion. Without another word, I open the last door between me and my past.

My old room was almost the exact same. Save for the dust, the furniture was all in the same place, the curtains a little ripped, cloth hanging from my canopy bed, a threadbare rug on the floor. The rocking chair beside the empty fireplace was even the same. As expected, a body was tucked away in this room that we had spent so much time in together before everything. The edges of my mouth seemed to grow much heavier when I saw the fragile-looking circlets around her wrists.

She looked up at me and seemed completely unaffected by my presence. The book in her hands was leather bound, and her quill was flowing unevenly across it. The room was freezing, but Impa had always had strange ways. I blinked in the dim room and spoke. "What are you doing here?" I was not particularly interested in the answer; she was there, and it was her presence, not her tale, I required.

Impa smiled at me, but it was a smile heavy with pain and a past of unspoken cruelty. "Most would ask the same of one not seen for almost a decade, but I think I already know the answer." She responded. She set her book and quill on the shoddy three legged table beside her and gestured for us to sit down. "There is much to tell you Zelda. For you and your guest, I shall risk the attention of lighting a fire. I haven't much time now that you've returned." Her smile was older than I had remembered, and the only sound between us was the fresh crackling of young fire. Finally her regretful voice joined fire's song.

"Zelda, despite my wishes, I know your return is not due to grace. I may warn you to stray from this black passion of yours, but your mind is made. I shall do the only thing I can to aid you in what I hope is a successful journey. But before you go out, you must know from where you start." She grew silent again, and flicked what appeared to be an idle finger at her quill. But I knew better. Her hands had only ever moved for a purpose, and that quill had strayed from its designated place on the table. Locked in a drafty room with agile shackles, at least she could control the positions of her instruments.

"You must listen to me, child," she said suddenly, woefully. "I have no time left, but these are things of which you must be aware. You have been away for far too long, and you don't think that you care about this nation, but this does matter. Hear me, and maybe you will be able to do what I never could."

She paused before she began again. "Maybe you will be able to turn the fates."

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**Tada. Okay, SHAMELESS PLUG TIME! Go read my story Phoenix. Now...please. If you like this, then I think you will enjoy it as well. Please point out any grammatical or spelling errors you may have found in here. Thanks for reading! Reviews make me happy. -DD**


	6. Chapter 6

**Wooooow, it's been a long time. I went through the whole "fanfiction is for writers with no life and no creativity" phase. But then I realized, hell, writing is writing. Good work is still good even if its based off of a video game. Plus fanfiction is one of the best ways of getting feedback I've encountered. So here you go, , another chapter. Maybe I'll get around to finishing this li'l story of mine this summer. I'm gonna try to get a chapter every week or so up, but forgive me if I don't; I'm only human after all. This is short, choppy, and may not make total sense with previous plot elements, but I'm just getting back into this, cut me some slack.**

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"Impa…" I frowned at her, and my arms limp at my sides. I clenched and unclenched my fists as I tried to piece together the right thing to say, but all my words crumbled to dust in the cold room. "We…we don't have time for this. You have to listen to me. You know what he did. You know why I'm still fighting him. It's…This is how it has to be."

Impa's gaze was steady and unyielding. Unlike all the other people I had ever met, I could never read the Sheikah woman. Hers was a face heavily guarded, and with the life she had lived, it was the only way she would have ever survived.

"Why, Zelda?" she asked, with her seemingly blank stare, though I knew her mind, like mine, was a warzone.

Why? Why had I devoted my entire life to the complete and systematic destruction of Ganondorf? My hand ran up and down my arm at the question, and the action did not go unnoticed by my former nursemaid. Her brow tensed ever so slightly when she saw my elbow, and her scrutinizing eyes swept over the damage.

"Din, what have you done this time? Come here, Zelda." I went to her in two smooth strides, knelt, and suddenly I was eleven again, Impa fixing up my scrapes from climbing trees and harassing the castle staff. I looked up at her face as she unwrapped my bandages and prodded at the sore skin. Her hair, once thick and steel grey, was lighter now, thinner, like cobwebs. The creases that had always surrounded her eyes and mouth were now set deep into her skin, far deeper than I had hoped to see them. Time had made her hands stiff, and fingers that had once been nimble and quick slipped along my arm, catching on themselves. I remembered those fingers raised to her lips as she whistled my lullaby to me in our garden. The Impa before me was a shadow of her former self, the retired warrior I knew growing up.

"Zelda." The stern word drew me out of my memories. Impa spoke quietly, barely moving her lips. "This has to stop. It happened, and yes, it was terrible, but you need to look at the world around you. See what has happened to Hyrule. Your _home_._" _

I glanced at Link, though he was oblivious to our conversation. "My _home _was hardly of any help to me when I called out in need. I'm simply behaving as they did."

"Honestly, Zelda. A few slumlords do not represent the whole of a nation. Surely you found compassion somewhere." My eyes twitched towards Link again, but she did not see. I remained silent, and she sighed. "What happened to you?"

I glared at her with fire eating at my soul. "You know exactly what happened to me. You damn well know how I ended up like this."

"No," she snapped, her hand gripping my arm firmly. "The Zelda I remember wasn't a selfish brat, and she cared about things other than her own designs. Do you have any idea what I've heard about you? The most horrible stories emerge about this renegade woman who murders in cold blood, who has no soul, who is either Din herself or the scourge of the earth. I was wrought with such grief when I finally realized it was my Zelda-"

"I am not _yours!"_ I said aloud as I snatched her wrist in my hand. I had intended to throw her off me, but in addition to her aged skin, my palm felt cold metal. I looked down, the angry lines of my face melting away, and there were her chains. They weren't connected to anything, but I knew what they were. Ganondorf wouldn't have been fool enough to think Impa could be contained by walls alone. "Specially made just for me," Impa said, completely humorless. "But you are right." I shut my lips that had fallen apart and met her eyes again. "You are not my Zelda. She died."

"Ganondorf killed her." I growled to myself, but I only said it harshly to keep myself from collapsing in pain into Impa's arms.

"No, Your Majesty." _What? _I thought. _She never called me that… _"You killed her."

I sucked my breath in sharply, my hand gripping her wrist tightly, desperate for something from the past. "How can you say that? You…you know…"

"That cannot be a shield for everything. You are hardly innocent. You are not acting on anyone's behalf but your own, and your country no longer needs you. They need someone, some form of salvation, but what can you do for them now? You're a murderer, a monster. You use people like rags and toss them away. You think you've never been loved, but maybe you were just never capable of returning compassion. Hyrule needs a leader; putting you on the throne would do no good. You're just as bad as Ganondorf."

"SHUT UP!" I yelled, jumping up from her and ripping my hands from her crippled old limbs. Link stood quietly, observing with his head tilted down. "I am not Ganondorf! I am nothing like him! He is evil, and I am only trying to right his wrongs against me! Who _ever_ said I wanted the throne? I have no desire to rule Hyrule, a nation of scum. They haven't loved me, why should I have loved them? Nothing can be born from such apathy!"

"How, how are you different from him?" Impa stood, throwing my bandages down to the floor. "Why can't you see yourself, Zelda? Do you think this is noble, or just, or that it will change what has happened?"

"No!" I shouted at the frail woman before me.

"THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" she yelled in my face, venom flying from her mouth.

Silence filled the air like smoke, choking us under its weight. The fire crackled and popped in its grate, undisturbed by the chaos before it.

"You're wrong, you know." Impa and I turned to face Link, his gaze fixed on the floor, preparing himself for what he had to say.

"What?" I asked, broken and confused after the outburst.

"Hyrule did love you." He looked up, somewhat battered by what he had witnessed. "Even before the fall, not everyone lived comfortably, not everyone approved of your father, but everyone loved the Princess. And when your father died, you were the future, our hope for a golden age. Why wouldn't we love you? You could have been great."

I stared at him. The words themselves just sounded so…naïve. But the way he delivered them, with complete assurance, made me believe him, or at least that he believed them.

"Could have been," I repeated quietly to myself. "Maybe so. But I didn't have that chance, now did I?"

"Why do you make it sound as if it is over?" Link asked. "As long as you're alive…"

I laughed bleakly and shook my head. "But I am no different from the _Great King_ himself. Isn't that so Impa?"

She gave me that emotionless stare as she lowered herself back into the chair, saying nothing. I sighed again and ran my hand across my forehead. "We don't have the time for this. Ganondorf knows that we're here. Impa, can you help me?"

"Zelda, I know what you have come for, but I don't have it anymore." I stared at her, trying to speak without success. "Come child. If we are running out of time as you say we are, then we'd better get started. I won't be able to finish healing your arm. Who did this to you?"

I looked at Link, still unable to speak. "So you are responsible. Joints are always difficult to heal with magic. The flesh winds together in intricate patterns, and so much of it is torn here. This arm will give you problems for a while."

"Where is it, Impa?" I asked, drawing up the energy to speak. As her hands swept over my arm, I became numb to the pain. I thanked her silently for the relief.

Impa sighed as she pressed her fingers into my arm. I gasped as I felt the strange sensation of muscles reforming and twisting in my arm, a familiar and unpleasant experience. "I thought," she began slowly, "that it was safe. And up until three years ago, it was. Don't worry, Ganondorf doesn't know where it is, but it is only a matter of time before he breaks someone who_ does _know."

I racked my brain for possibilities. What places had he controlled for more than three years? Most of the South, down to Lake Hylia. The East was just now truly being harnessed. As for the West, that was the desert. What would it be doing in the West? But then again, nothing much came out of that desert except weapons…three years ago…

"The ore mine," I whispered to myself.

Impa smiled bleakly at me. "Yes, child, you are just as quick as ever. Up until three years ago, Ganondorf had dared not desecrate such holy ground."

"Holy ground?" I asked. "Wait, if those are his mines, then you know where they are! Impa, help me! Please, I need to know where they are. It has been over a year, but none of my sources can find it."

"You already know, Zelda. Ganondorf has never had any respect for anything, whether it is human life or the sake of Hyrule or sacred establishments."

"Oh Farore, no," Link said from the corner, and then I understood. Why no one had been able to find the mines, why shipments of weapons seemed to simply appear out of sandstorms, why Ganondorf had stooped to even burning the Sacred Forest.

"It's in the Spirit Temple," I said as the squirming of flesh in my arm became a mere distraction.

"Goddesses, please say that's not true. This can't be true," said Link. "No wonder Hyrule is turning into a living hell if Ganondorf is doing this."

"Impa," I began sharply. "How am I supposed to get there? You remember what the desert is like. Not the city, not where the women live, but the wastelands. I can't survive out in that. I'll go mad, or die of thirst, or-"

Impa held her hand up, and I was quiet. Blue and purple lines crossed all her skin like the knots of charms that bound the door on the way in. I wished I could just tug the right one and all this horror would unravel and we could go back to simpler days. But I knew better.

"What you need is the Eye of Truth," Impa declared.

The words meant nothing to me, but Link looked shocked. "But that well was closed up years ago when the claims that it was haunted grew to upset the villagers. How are we supposed to get it now?"

Impa smiled at Link, knowing what neither of us could. "I moved it. You know Kakiriko well enough, Knight. I remember you."

Link stared at her, blinking in confusion until comprehension bloomed across his face. "Dear Din…" He walked over to us, and as Impa removed her healing palms from my arm, Link slowly drew his hand from his pack, revealing the green stone, the Kokiri Emerald.

Suddenly a great clanging began to make its way up the staircase. We all turned our heads sharply towards the door, completely frozen, none daring to breathe. And then-

THUNK. Someone's weight had been thrown into the door, and it could only be a matter of time before that barrier was knocked down.

"Get out," Impa said without taking her eyes from the door. "Go down the balcony. Zelda, your arm is going to be a hindrance, but there's no other way now." We stared at her as we began to suck sweet air into our lungs again, the heavy smashing of intruders at the door. "GO!"

Link and I ran to the window, and as he flung the curtains out of the way and began to look for a way down, I glanced over my shoulder at Impa. She was sitting back into her chair, and she smiled at me.

"I'm not going to see you again, am I?" I asked.

"You have been loved, you know. I loved you. Even if you can't appreciate that, I hope you at least know it's true."

I nodded but evaded her gaze. I didn't need tears in my eyes when I was scaling a rock wall. "May the Goddesses be with you, Impa." As I grabbed the ivy beside the balcony, I knew what we were both thinking.

_Zelda, of the two of us, you need their help more._

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**There you have it. Every time you tell a writer when they're messing shit up, an angel gets its wings... I think... Let me know what worked for you and what didn't. THANKS GUUUUUUYS! -DD**


	7. Chapter 7

**So there is a 100% chance that there are typos in this. I am certain because I finished editing it at about two in the morning. And I do say editing in the very loosest sense of the word. SIX THOUSAND WORDS, GUYS! I almost feel like a real writer. Almost. Enjooooooooooy.  
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"Link," she said. In the two hours we had spent scaling walls and sneaking out castles passageways, the Princess had said nothing to me outside of directional orders. Now, as my feet hit the ground beyond the city walls, she squinted at the horizon as she began to braid her hair over her shoulder.

"Princess," I nodded at her, dusting my clothes off and digging through my effects in search of Epona's whistle. "What can I do for you?"

"First, I'd appreciate it if you told me where I could find this Eye of Truth Impa spoke of. I get the feeling the desert will finally kill me if I attempt to best it alone."

I nodded to her again. "If I understood Impa correctly, it's still in Kakiriko. I think I know where it is, a place where I met her when I was younger. And stupider."

The Princess smirked slightly. "Impa makes everyone feel stupider. After knowing her most of my life, I am still not immune to the effects of her scrutiny." She shook her head before turning back to me. "But I am going to ask something else of you, Link, something that is probably unfair of me. I understand if you choose to run away on your own, but whether you come with me or not, Ganondorf will be after you now. He probably knows that I didn't kill you, yet you haven't returned to him. You are an outlaw now. You could run to Termania or the sea…" she clenched her fists and glanced at the boots we had stolen earlier that day before looking back to me. "Or you could come and help me tear that bastard king to shreds. He's burning your forest and he must be hunting you, so I don't think you'll feel too much remorse in changing sides. If you choose to come with me, that is."

I studied her hard expression as I thought. What had happened to her? Last night she had done her damnedest to skewer me, then convinced me to bust into a castle with her, and now…

"You've changed since last night, Princess. Why do you want me? Why don't you just kill me and get on with your revenge mission?"

She opened her mouth before closing it to think again. Some sense of sanity she had been lacking until we'd fled the castle had now worked its way into her thought process. When she spoke again, her speech was calculated. "Since I was turned out by Ganondorf, I've been obsessed with destroying him. I still am, I suppose. And earlier, when I said the throne wasn't my motive, I meant it. But seeing Impa again for the last time has made me remember what I felt for Hyrule as a girl. You remind me of the Hyrule I used to believe in, and I want to believe in it again. Also, you're…"

Something in my chest clenched as she trailed off into silence, the breeze carrying the rest of her thought up into the air and over the wide plains. "You yelled my name earlier," I said, "When we were fighting near the archive, but I hadn't told you my name."

She smiled. "Link, I'm sorry for what I've put you through, and I'm sorry that your life isn't going to be the same after not. If you do decide to come with me, you'll seen that I'm… broken, a bit." She laughed to herself. "Quite a lot, actually."

"I will come with you, Princess," I said. I raised Epona's whistle to my lips and blew as the Princess smiled. I didn't know if being 'broken' had anything to do with her dramatic mood change or not, but I figured I'd find out before long.

"We'll be needing supplies before we set out," she sighed. Her palms twitched. "I don't like being without suitable weapons, and we must find food and water for the next few weeks as well, a tent if we can. I've got to find a horse, too." She yawned and suddenly looked like she might cry. "Oh Din, it's been so long since I've slept."

I laughed as I saw Epona's form appear out of a castle gate. "As long as you don't mind riding behind me, I can get you to most of those things before noon."

I watched as she let the exhaustion fill her shoulders and weaken her willpower. "That makes me so happy. Goddesses above, I could kiss you right now."

I was so surprised by that comment -and by how the thought of kissing her wormed in and out of my head for the next few hours - that I didn't notice when something flashed across her skin. When Epona reached us, I swung myself up over her saddle and help the Princess up behind me. With the sun climbing overhead, we rode for LonLon Ranch.

SsSsS

As promised, we reached the Ranch before noon. "Link!" Malon's enthusiasm was lessened neither by the drowsy blonde behind me nor the fact that she had seen me four days earlier. The Princess had merely nodded at Malon when I dragged her down from Epona before slouching onto my shoulder with her eyelids drooping. I'd told Malon that we were very happy to see her, but we needed a place to sleep before anything else; she fixed a room from the old farmhouse for us in ten minutes flat. I dropped the Princess onto the bed and fell asleep in a chair in the corner before she could even thank me for half-carrying her up the stairs.

When I woke I was in a strange, old room. It wasn't the first time I'd woken to unfamiliar surroundings, but this small, sparsely furnished bedroom didn't make me nervous. I couldn't remember a thing about how I'd gotten there until I saw Link sleeping with his head tipped back in a chair opposite my bed. Then I remembered the last day, fighting Link, learning of Ganondorf's plans, seeing Impa again…

_She's probably dead by now, _I thought, digging the heels of my palms into my eyes. I didn't want to think about what Ganondorf must have done to her after I left, but I knew. I prayed that she was dead by now. Ganondorf liked to play with his food before he ate it. If she was still alive… Impa may have been the strongest woman I'd ever met, but ever her soul could be torn apart by the likes of Ganondorf.

I pulled myself up from the bed and walked barefoot across the dusty floor. Where had my boots gone? I didn't remember losing them. My hair had come undone from its braid at some point. I tugged at the tired ends of my tresses as I walked to the tiny window. I saw a riding ring, a granary, stables, and a number of farm animals below us. In the distance, two figures were standing among the horses feeding a foal; I thought I could hear whistling. I was rubbing dust from the glass – what kind of farm had bedrooms with glass windows? – when I heard Link stir behind me. I turned and walked to him as quietly as I could.

He looked much younger in his sleep. The crinkled skin around his eyes was smooth and the muscles in his shoulders had relaxed. His breathing was even and the slightest of smiles was tugging at the edge of his mouth. Whatever he was dreaming of must have been lovely; probably the forest before Ganondorf began burning it, before Link was in the army, before my father died. I was reaching out to brush his hair away so I could see his face better when I saw my hand, free of the spells I'd spent so long learning to keep in place.

"Dammit!" I hissed as I ran to the tiny dresser beside the door where a dish of water, a jug of milk, and a plate of bread and freshly picked fruit had been left. In a calmer moment, I might have gone to look for the farm's proprietor to thank them for this gesture, but then I was panicking as quietly as I could. I cast a mirror spell over the water and looked at my face. All the spells had faded away in my sleep. I hadn't remembered to recast them before sleeping and they had slipped from my skin entirely.

"Din, please tell me he didn't see," I moaned to myself. Was he awake long enough to see me? I hoped not, hoped so very much. When I was younger, I could just cover my skin and call myself other names, but he would notice if I draped myself in fabric in the middle of summer. I recast spells as quickly as I could, mumbling incantations when necessary, rubbing my past from my arms, my neck, my face. I was almost done, so close to piecing myself back together, when –

"Princess?"

He was awake. I could feel his gaze boring into my back like a knife, sinking past my skin and sending shivers down my spine. I didn't answer him but squeezed my eyes shut and covered myself in spells as quickly as I could. The silence stretched out between us and I heard the floorboards creak as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. That was a habit of his even when I knew him a few years ago. I remember how he'd squirm in discomfort whenever I was too blunt or pried too much. I'd thought the habit childish then. Now I just hoped he didn't think me rude or petty.

"Have I… done something?" I heard him stand. I knew my silence confused him but I couldn't turn around, not yet. "I took your boots last night, I hope that wasn't a problem. They're outside the door if you need them… Malon said that should be fine..." he sighed as I buried my face in my hands and finished casting. "What have I do-"

"Your friends brought us breakfast!" I spun around with the dish of food in my hands, beaming from ear to ear. "You caught me chewing, I'm sorry I couldn't answer you. I'm sorry I didn't wake you before I started…" My shoulders sunk slightly. He could see through my bright act, could see the cracks forming in my resolve, but he said nothing. I sighed and stopped acting so perky. "Do you mind eating on the bed?" I asked. He held his hand out. "Ladies first," he answered, and I sank onto the covers.

"That is the first time I have been called a lady in a long time," I grimaced. As he sat he watched me, trying to find any signs of instability. We ate in silence until he asked if I planned to travel as Princess Zelda or not.

"Do you think that wise?" I asked, drinking delicious milk from the jug. There was rarely ever fresh milk in the city since Ganondorf had restricted trade in and out of the capitol walls. "I'm only Princess Zelda when I think the risk of Creants finding me is low or if I aim to intimidate."

"Conmen are intimidated by princesses?" Link asked. He meant to joke, but a look from me and his smile faded. Conmen respected me and stayed away from me not because of my title but because of the things I had accomplished and the men I had killed.

I shook my head. "Most of the country thinks I am dead. I will travel as someone else. Few people recognize me for who… what I used to be, but I think I should wear some kind of disguise, regardless."

He nodded and finished chewing his bite of bread. "I know you use magic glamours, but wearing those once we reach the desert may be unwise. The Gerudos have set up all kinds of traps and other precautions to keep intruders out. Nothing short of the most advanced magic can fool them."

I sighed and wiped my mouth with a handkerchief. My mind was racing at this news, but I prayed Link couldn't see my concern. What was I without my magic and my title? _Evil, that's what, _I thought, but I shook the thought off. Impa had really done a number on my mental stability. In the desert I would be completely vulnerable. I had been before, but the barren landscape had made me feel small and weak, two things I loathed feeling more than anything else. That, and no matter how far I looked in any direction, I could not forget that this was where _he _had come from. My hatred of the Western lands had caused me to send spies even when they failed. I couldn't decide which would be worse, failing to Ganondorf or returning to the desert. I was still dreading it, but now I wouldn't be alone. Now I had Link.

"Thank you," I said as I handed him the milk jug. "It's been a long time since I've traveled with anyone. Thank you for coming with me."

He just smiled at me before tossing the rest of the milk down his throat. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and then slapped his palms onto his knees.

"Now," he said, eyes bright. "We plan."

SsSsS

The Princess and I sat on the guest bed most of the morning and planned our journey to Kakariko and then into the West. To Malon's delight, we agreed to spend a week at LonLon regrouping and organizing supplies. We needed to get to Kakariko in one piece, which was growing more and more difficult these days, so the Princess would need a horse. Ingo was not thrilled to be losing one of his horses, but I promised to pay him a fair price for whichever horse she chose. "Please," Malon had hissed to me after talking to Ingo. "That scum wouldn't know what a fair price was if it kicked him in the gut."

"Now now, Malon," her fiancée Trune had laughed. "Let's not give the stallions any ideas."

The first day, the Princess was jittery. "I'm not used to being anywhere so… open." I smiled. While the grounds at LonLon Ranch were extensive, that wasn't what she meant. I'd told Malon that she was a childhood friend, and I was accompanying her home to Termania. Initially, Zelda said she should be my cousin, but Malon knew too much about me to believe I had any family. Beyond this one lie, though, the Princess had nothing to hide behind. In the city, she could run away down dark alleys and intimidate anyone who got in her way. Here, there was no secrecy, no intimidation.

At dinner, Malon always glanced at the two of us, pretending we didn't notice her noticing us. She would purse her lips together as if she was suppressing a smile, and then go back to poking her food around. After four nights of this, she finally spoke up.

"So, how long have you two been with each other?" she asked. I almost spit my milk across the table and the Princess sounded like she was gagging on her steak. Trune sighed and buried himself in some accounts while he shoveled rice into his face.

"Malon, really, it's-" but of course she didn't let me finish speaking.

"Well she's a nice enough girl, Link, and you never let yourself have any happiness in your life. It's about time you settled down and had a family."

The Princess finally swallowed her steak and put her fork down a bit harder than necessary. I could feel her staring at me but I couldn't look at her. Embaressment heated up my neck as my hands rose in defense.

"Where do you even get ideas like this?" I demanded.

"Well you haven't asked for an additional room and the two of you are 'planning' all the time. How should I know what you're doing up there?"

Oh Din, I was going to die. "I've been sleeping in the chair! I didn't even know you had other rooms!"

"Well we don't, Link, but the point is that you didn't ask for one."

"Look, Malon, Tetra is really just a friend. I've known her almost as long as I've known you."

"Then why have I never heard about her?" Malon crossed her arms and grinned, as if she considered the matter settled with this one argument.

"Because I figured you'd react like this," I grumbled. Trune snorted from the head of the table, but returned to work when Malon glared at him.

"Tetra, don't tell me he hasn't tried to win you at all?"

'Tetra' looked at me and I could hear laughter barely restrained as she said, "Oh, Link, why _haven't _you tried to 'win' me? You _have _always been a sore loser, though…" What? Why did she find this so funny? She'd tried to kill me less than a week ago, and now she was laughing at _this_?

I began to answer when Trune spoke up. "Link, I'm afraid there's no winning here. It's hard enough disagreeing with one women, much less these two chattering hens. Just chew as much steak as possible every time they talk to you."

I was going to argue with this, too, but then I just shut up and ate my steak.

SsSsS

"Link."

After dinner we were walking up to our room in silence. He hadn't said much since Malon had gone off on him, and while I'd found the whole situation hilarious – when was the last time anyone had ever mentioned marriage and me in the same breath? – Link had grown very quiet. He glanced over his shoulder going up the stairs when I said his name, but he kept walking.

"Link," I grabbed his arm this time. "Did that actually bother you?"

He smiled halfheartedly and opened the door to our room. He held his hand out for me to go in first, and after he followed me in, he answered with a sigh.

"I'm sorry, Link, I didn't realize it would upset you." I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him as he took his boots off.

"It's not you or Malon, really," he shook his head, looking back to me. He ran a hand through his hair as he sat in the armchair where he actually had been sleeping the last few nights. "That conversation just got me to wondering if I ever would actually have a family someday."

I blinked at him. How was I supposed to answer that? I never thought about family if I could help it. Since being thrown out and realizing my revenge plot, I'd never even considered settling down. It was something a lot of people wished for, and recalling our conversations in the woods during wartime, I remembered that Link had spoken as though that would be his future: a wife and children and a modest living.

"It was never a conscious decision of mine," he said, leaning forward, "I've never pined for a wife or kids, just…" he stared at his hands as he twisted them, elbows on his knees. "Did you know I grew up in the Kokiri Forest?"

Having seen his reaction to the news that Ganondorf was burning the place to Hell, I wasn't surprised. "It's uncommon for the Kokiri to raise a human," I said. "Actually, I can barely think of any outsiders they allow into their forest."

Link nodded. "My mother was dying. She'd lived in a town near the Gerudo Valley before any of the conflicts arose, and she was wounded badly when the first uprisings began. I'd just been born weeks before. She'd grabbed me and rode away in a haze, not knowing where she was going. She'd, uh… she'd lost a lot of blood. When she ended up in front of the Great Deku Tree, she had no idea where she was or what was happening. The Deku Tree promised to look after me when she died, though. And I lived with them until I was too old, and when the Deku Tree told me about my past, I took his blessings and the gift of the Kokiri Emerald and left. That's how I ended up on Lonlon Ranch… and then in the army."

I didn't know what this all had to do with getting married, but as he fell silent, I figured out why he'd told me all this.

"They don't remember you, do they?"

Link shook his head. I expected him to look heartbroken, but he just looked tired. "The Deku Tree had died by the next time I returned, and none of the Kokiri recognized me. They were still kind to me… I think they still felt some kind of connection, but they had no idea who I was."

I stared at my boots as I thought. We weren't so different. Neither of us had proper homes, but he'd always assumed that he'd make a home some day. I'd just figured I'd be dead by then. He was still staring at his hands and looking numb when I glanced at him again. I hated seeing him without any life in his eyes, hated seeing him unhappy. If either of us should be unhappy, it should be me. Not because I had gone through worse, but because I was the bleaker person.

I grabbed his pack from the corner and fished around until I found the Kokiri Emerald. He didn't look at me as I walked over to him; I think he was lost in memories he didn't entirely remember. Kneeling in front of him, I unfolded his fingers and placed the emerald in his palm.

"It's still your home," I told him. "Just because they don't remember you doesn't mean you can't remember them."

He smiled at me and wrapped his fingers around the emerald. I realized that my hands were still on the stone, and now my fingers were tied up in his, and his face was close to mine. I could count his eyelashes, lean my forehead against his, kiss his smiling lips.

I stood up and pulled my hands from his, crossing and uncrossing my arms before hurrying across the room and fussing with my hair. "And don't worry, you'll find some country girl to marry you and have a whole mess of children and Ganondorf will never find you, not ever…" I heard him stand behind me and walk to his pack to put the emerald away. When I turned around he was looking right at me.

"Thank you, Princess."

"Link, after what we've been through in the last week, I don't think it would be out of line to call me Zelda."

He grinned and nodded. "Goodnight, Zelda. We have to find you a horse in the morning."

SsSsS

Zelda choose the most expensive stallion on the farm.

"Because he is the best," she said.

"Because women are difficult," Trune mumbled at my shoulder. Malon elbowed him in the side, but he only laughed at her. Those two were a match made by the Goddesses if I ever did see one.

He was a massive paint named Whiskey, and he'd fathered a third of the colts on the ranch. I'd never seen a larger horse; his withers were as tall as I was. I didn't even know is she could mount him without the kind of blocks children used when they learned to ride, but she hoisted herself up onto his saddle without a problem.

"Can anyone even ride that stallion? Has anyone _ever _been on that stallion?"

"I don't know, but that stallion's been on quite a few mares," Malon elbowed Trune again. "Ow! I honestly don't know, Link. Both Tetra and Whiskey are pretty hard-headed from what I can tell. Maybe that will help them or maybe they'll just kill each other." He rubbed his side as we all watched.

Whiskey wouldn't even walk at first, but Zelda dug her heals in far enough to budge him two steps. She dug her boots into his side again. He inched forward again. This went on for a whole lap around the ring. I expected her to start whipping him or yelling or do something ridiculous, but instead she just bent down until she was draped over his neck. I think she was whispering something to him – oh Din, was she casting a spell on the horse? – when she sat back up. She dug her heals in his side again, but with a little less force. Whiskey tossed his head and snorted. Zelda rubbed her hands across his withers and loosened her reigns. She dug her heals again. I half expected Whiskey to gallop off around the ring and submit to her every will. Whiskey began trotting unevenly instead. Zelda kept talking to him as they rode, and eventually his gait became a little more even. For an hour, they rode, alternating directions around the ring, never going faster than a trot. Every time I saw her face, her mouth was moving, and Whiskey's ears were cocked back to her to listen.

Finally Zelda dismounted and rubbed Whiskey affectionately, removing his tack and leading him without any rope back to his field to graze. She beamed as she walked to us.

"He's the one," she said as she glanced back at him, hands on her hips. Wisps of hair had come free from hear braid and a light sweat covered her forehead, but she looked happier than I'd seen her since I told her I could get her a place to sleep.

"You didn't even take him faster than a trot. I'm just guessing, Tetra, but I think there are going to be times when we need to go faster than a trot." Trune and Malon glanced at each other, wondering what exactly the two of us might be doing once we left, but neither said anything. "When are you going to break him?" I asked.

She laughed as she regained her breath. "I don't need to break him. We understand one another. He'll come to peace with me and then we can go faster than a trot. Did you 'break' Epona?"

I was prepared to argue, but she had a point. In the beginning, Epona and I hadn't worked together seamlessly like we did now, but I'd never had to beat her into submission. We'd just given each other time to work together. I nodded at Zelda, understanding her. "Whiskey is beautiful... how much is he?" I asked Trune.

He sighed. "Quite a lot of money, if you want him for a fair price. And Ingo won't part with him willingly."

I sighed and looked at Zelda over my shoulder. "How much do you love that horse?"

"He's perfect," she said flatly.

I wasn't sure what constituted as 'a lot of money', but I was fairly sure we didn't have it. "Would you be willing to reduce the price?" I asked Malon. "As… as a wedding present?"

She squealed and jumped onto me. "Link, Link, I knew it! You dog, lying to me like that! Oh, of course we can! When is the wedding?"

I looked at Zelda. She trying so hard to keep from laughing it looked like she was going to be sick. "It will be in Termania. Tetra's parents don't approve, so we're running away. You have to keep this quiet, Malon."

But Malon was already jabbering to Trune about how we simply _must _celebrate and a whole load of other nonsense that made me vow to never tell Malon when I was actually getting married. Trune threw me a sympathetic smile as Malon herded him away to plan something ungodly for us that evening. I smiled back as much as I could, but I was not looking forward to what came next.

"Link, don't you remember how romantic it was when you proposed? Yes, it was in the market, when you decided that you could propose and get a discount on lamb at the same time. Ah, I'll remember it till I die. How our children will love the story!"

I turned around slowly to her laughter. "Well, I think it just got us Whiskey for free."

"There is a punishment for this, you know," she grinned.

"Malon's wedding shower?" I cringed.

"Well, that too. Also…" and she looked at me with such mischief in her eye that I nearly sprinted away.

"Don't, please, whatever you're thinking about doing, don't-"

And then she dragged me to the main house where Malon could see us, grabbed my head in both her hands, and kissed me on the nose so hard I thought it might collapse back into my skull. Malon shrieked in giddy, girlish joy and Zelda strode away laughing. Trune, at least, said nothing.

SsSsS

"Our engagement party wasn't so bad," I told Link when we got back to our room. "Not as many flowers as I expected."

Link groaned and collapsed into his chair. "We've got to get out of here before Malon tries to officiate the ceremony herself. Honestly, we've gotten no planning done since she 'discovered' our secret engagement!"

"Oh, relax. Most of this evening was just me talking about how you courted me and our _forbidden love affair_."

Link groaned again and threw his arms over his face. "Don't remind me."

I laughed and then sighed. "I haven't had this much fun since, well…" I stopped and tried to remember the last time I thought that I was truly happy. I could remember being satisfied, and that rush of power that comes with stabbing a lesser human being in the neck. But happiness…

"I am not a very happy person," I said quietly.

"That can happen when you're hell-bent on revenge," he mumbled through his arms.

I fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. "I don't think I've been this happy since I was Sheik."

I didn't think about saying it at all. It just slipped out of my mouth and it wasn't until I heard the clatter of a chair being thrown aside and saw Link hovering above me that I realized what I'd said.

"You're Sheik," Link said. It wasn't a question because now it all made sense to him now. He knew how he knew me, knew why I'd yelled his name during the battle in the castle. I'd yelled his name in combat a hundred times before, and he'd yelled the name I'd worn at the time. We'd saved each other's lives more times than I could remember. And now he was staring down at me. What was he thinking? I couldn't tell, but I knew the fear was written all across my face.

"Oh Nayru, what have I said." I stood up immediately and hurried to the nearest wall so Link couldn't see the terror written on my face. Nononononono, what had I said, what had I done? Would he hate me now? Would he change his mind about coming with me?

"Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you?" he said. His voice was strained.

When I tried to speak, I found my throat had gone dry. My words came out quiet and tense. "Presumably since Sheik disappeared."

"Din, Zelda, why didn't you just tell me?" he said, but he didn't sound angry. I spun around to look at him. He was a little confused, but more so he just looked happy.

"You're not mad," I said. "Why are you not mad at me?"

"Why would I be mad? I found you!" He laughed as he walked to me and grabbed me in a hug. His chest continued to shake with laughter against mine and I suddenly felt very small. He knew so much about me, and now he knew that I was Sheik, and thus every single conversation we'd ever had in the woods or in war applied to Zelda, as well. And now I expected him to ask me where I'd gone or why I'd never tried to find him after those Wars had ended, but he just puts his hands on my shoulders and held me at arm's length, grinning like a little boy. "Thank Farore, I thought they'd killed you."

"Who?"

He laughed again. "Well, how many people might have wanted to kill Sheik? I can think of a few dozen."

I laughed with him this time. Why was I afraid of this? I knew Link too well to think he would make our reunion unhappy. His heart was filled with all the joy and light mine had lost. I should have known he'd be happy to have found his friend, not angry that he hadn't found him sooner.

"Is Sheik taller than you?"

I laughed and nodded. "Close to your height, remember? Magic disguises and all."

"But where have you been? Why didn't you ever come to find me?"

I smiled up to him. He looked so sublimely happy, I didn't feel like destroying his joy with any of the gritty details of my past. "Let's not talk about that."

He looked a little confused and began to protest when I said, "Please." He just nodded, laughed, and grabbed me back into a hug, a little less urgent this time. I could feel his hot palm on the back of my head and his cheek near mine. "I missed you," I told him.

He dropped his arms from around me and shook his head, smiling. "I've missed you too. Din, this is disorienting. You have too many names! Malon thinks I'm marrying Tetra, Ganondorf's after the Princess, and I've finally found my good friend Sheik. Just who are you, Zelda?"

He wasn't looking for answer, because he just turned back to upright his chair and to get ready for bed.

It was a good thing he didn't need an answer.

SsSsS

"Malon, I know we promised to stay two more days, but now that you know about _us,_" I whispered this last word, "you _know _why we can't stay. It's not that we don't trust you, it just isn't safe for us anymore."

Malon bit her lip as her eyes filled with tears. She couldn't even speak she was so moved by our love story, so she clasped her hands together and nodded before hugging me. "Good to see you, Trune. Don't let her win."

Trune barely glanced up from his paperwork. "Never."

"Thank you for all your hospitality, Malon," Zelda said from atop Whiskey as Malon and I walked outside. "And for the early wedding present."

I had come to find our wedding lie infinitely more amusing now that I knew Zelda was Sheik.

"Come back to visit once you think it's safe for you two, Link," Malon's freshly dried tears were about to be replaced. "I'll miss you."

I permitted her to hug me again and shrugged off her offers of more food before we left Lonlon Ranch. The last five days, despite all the planning and packing and fake engagements, had been some of the most relaxing I'd had in years. Once Malon's waving silhouette faded away in the soft light of dawn, I remembered our purpose. We were headed to the Desert, where Ganondorf controlled every grain of sand and the women wouldn't think twice about slicing our heads from our necks. We were going to break into the Spirit Temple, the Holy Ground Ganondorf was set on destroying. Both Zelda and I were wanted, though perhaps her quite a bit more than me.

First, though, we would journey to Kakariko. There, we would find the graveyard, where one grave would open into a wide labyrinth leading to a windmill, where, before I had ever met Sheik or ever feared Ganondorf, I had met a woman called Impa, who knew more about me that I did. There, we would find the Eye of Truth.

I prayed Zelda didn't fear the dead.

* * *

**Now, if you felt like the writing style changed about a third of the way through, that's probably because it did. I wrote this in two sessions (even typing the word 'sessions' in reference to writing makes me feel pretentious. Uuuugh) and I said to myself "THE HELL WITH STYLE CONTINUITY!" and I threw that bitch to the winds, I did. Sorry for being lazy and not keeping up with it, I just wanted to get this up on the internet so we could move on in le plot, YEAH?**

**In other somewhat disturbing news, I have become a bit of a brony. Please God, if you are merciful, that will not influence my writing style. Eh. I guess it's better than Beiber-Fever. Is Beiber-Fever still a thing...?**

**Now I'm just prattling. R&R, if you dare. It gives my life meaning. That and MLP, of course. Oh, that is so not actually funny. Kthxbai.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Hey, so you know how that last chapter was fairly happy? This one isn't. Sorry. Typos, typos, how we all love typos! Call me out on any glaringly obvious errors and I'll see if I can't patch them up.  
**

* * *

The southern sky was teeming with clouds the whole day as Link and I rode to Kakariko, and by nightfall, they were descending upon us. In less than half an hour, the sky had morphed from soft afternoon light to the eerie darkness of a summer storm. Link yelled out through the wind, telling me to follow him, and as rain plunged to the earth from a disturbing angle, we rode as fast as we could. Whiskey bucked around a bit below me, but he could sense the storm looming in our future. Sharp white lines of lightning were just gaining on our tails when Link led us at last to a cave overlooking a small lake born from the Zora's River. After we had forced our horses to go in and made sure all our supplies were safe, Link went to the mouth of the cave and watched the angry sky flash and growl. When he returned to the back of the cave, I had built a small fire and put on a small pot of chicken soup.

"Smells great," he said as he sat, rubbing his hands together. "How much longer?"

"An hour, maybe," I said, stirring the broth. He looked horrified. "Just be patient! If you're really starving, Malon packed us plenty of bread. Go gnaw on that for a while."

He chuckled as he rifled through our packs in search of bread. "You always used to cook for us, in the War. I would have starved without you a dozen times over."

"You would have had your head bashed in without me a hundred times over," I said as I put the lid back over our soup and he located the bread.

"Touche," he mumbled through his mouthful of grain. A comfortable silence fell over us as he ate and the horses got over their unrest and I stirred our soup every few minutes. Despite the monstrous storm outside, I was calm. I felt safe, and I wasn't worried about anything. With Link beside me, the Desert seemed like a minor threat, Ganondorf just a fly to swat away. Underneath the layer of calm I knew we had bitter work ahead of us, but for night we were quiet and safe from the turbulence outside.

"Zelda?" Link wasn't eating anymore. I glanced up at him, lying down and staring at the few stalactites above.

"Mhm?"

He was silent for a moment, and I knew the peaceful lull was about to end. Now it was time for Serious Discussion. I put down the ladle I was holding and placed my hands in my lap, preparing myself for whatever he had to say.

"I understand if you don't want to answer me, but I still need to ask… what did Ganondorf do to you?"

I bit my tongue as I decided how to answer. "Why do you need to ask?"

"Zelda…" he propped himself up onto one elbow and stared at me as he spoke, but I wouldn't meet his gaze. We had been so comfortable just a moment before. Why did he have to ruin it by asking about such evil times? "Din, Zelda, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. Are you going to cry?"

"What?" I asked, genuinely surprised. "No, of course not." I looked up at him, and while he was relieved, he still didn't look convinced. "Crying isn't really my thing…" I looked back into my hands.

"He never… _violated _me, if that's what you're asking," I told him. "Not him personally, at least, there were others to do that. He used my body to gain political alliances before he tossed me out." I laughed, and I was startled by how cruel the sound was. "Turns out there are some perverted men in power."

Link's lip was twisted in disgust when I looked back to him, his brow lowered. "You were twelve…"

"Turns out there are some perverted men in power," I repeated. My voice was flat. My mood was flat. The boiling soup began to push the lid up from the pot before me, so I returned to stirring.

"Is…is that all?" Link asked.

"No, no it isn't, Link, but I don't really care to talk about it at the moment. That wasn't exactly the brightest time in my young life." I slammed the ladle around in the pot and dropped a bowl unceremoniously before Link. "Dinner's ready, serve yourself."

"Zelda, I'm sorry." He said as I turned away from him and started to set out my bed roll. "That was stupid of me, I should have stopped while I was ahead."

The storm outside settled down, but I'd felt much better in the turbulence, before Link had spoken. But the moment had to end.

"At least eat some of your soup," Link said.

"I'm not particularly hungry any more, thank you." I turned over under my blanket and didn't speak again for the rest of the night.

The next morning we spoke only when we needed to, packed in silence, and set out towards the sunrise. I don't know whether or not Whiskey could sense my unease, but he gave me very little resistance that day. I gave him an extra handful of feed in thanks when we stopped, and he almost nuzzled me. Almost. More so he just bumped my shoulder with his nose, but I took what I could get.

We rode north along the Zora's River for the rest of the day, and once again, dark clouds brewed in the South. They followed us all morning and into the evening until they gathered in the same angry storm as the night before. Once again, we bolted for shelter, but Whiskey barely bucked under me at all. We weren't as lucky as the night before; the only shelter around was a rock overhang bordering the river. We shoved ourselves as far under the cliff as we could, but the horses continued to stamp and toss their heads as we unpacked. I roasted a hare I'd caught earlier that day, and along with bread and some cheese, Link and I ate in silence. We rolled out our blankets in silence. Then we went to bed in silence, but neither of us slept.

A few hours into the night, a storm still howling just beyond the cliff's protection, I heard rustling coming from Link's blankets. I squinted at him, but once he lit another small fire, I could see him easily.

"Zelda, we can't ignore each other," he sighed.

I stared at him, his tired eyes and weary face. He was barely older than I, but the lines etched around his eyes and mouth were heavier than a man of twenty years should have been. Men who had seen many years more but far fewer horrors had the kind of rough lines in their faces that Link had looking at me then. I said nothing, though. He hadn't even made me truly angry, but he'd stirred up the spite crawling under my skin. I hadn't felt it pulling me at all on the ranch, planning a fake wedding with Link and belittling the Desert. There I was happy enough to have been a whole different person. Tetra, perhaps. Anyone other than Zelda.

Link ran his hands through his hair and dropped cross legged to the ground in front of me. I turned my head away. "We're going to the Desert together. I'm sure you've been there." I still wouldn't look at him. "It'll dig up all your demons and spit them back in your face. I'm sorry I pried last night, but if your past can hurt you at all, the Desert will use that against us and we'll never get to the Spirit Temple. Ganondorf will win."

I spit at this without even thinking about it. I wasn't looking at him, but I knew Link's eyebrows had jumped up. I'd spent too much time with the man in our younger days.

"Zelda, will you please just talk to me? Just…say something?"

"Fine," I snapped. I was still buried in my blankets, but he sighed in relief at the sound of my voice.

"We're going to have to clear out our evils before we get to the Desert, you know."

"I'm aware." I sat up and unbraided my hair. My scalp was itching. My whole body was suddenly itching.

Link smiled. "So what's your plan? What are you going to do about Ganondorf?"

"I'm going to kill him." I ran my fingers through the loose knots. Link's smile faltered.

"That's it? Nothing more than that?"

I dropped my hands into my lap and let some of my exhaustion creep into my face. "I've been working for eight years towards this. I am going to kill him."

"Zelda… I may not know the details, but I know he did terrible things to you. You deserve to be angry… but does murdering Ganondorf make you any better than him, any less monstrous?"

"It's not about being better than him," I sighed as I began arranging my tresses once more over my shoulder. "He put me through Hel. I just want to return the favor."

"And prove what?"

"Nothing," I said.

"So you'll kill him without a single thought as to what your country needs. It's just selfish revenge for you."

"You heard Impa." I finished rebraiding my hair, glanced at Link, and settled back down into my blankets. "Hyrule doesn't _need _me." I closed my eyes and prepared to fall asleep.

"Would you stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself?"

My eyes snapped open and suddenly I was standing over Link with fists clenched and angry magic running through my veins. My hair was drifting slightly above my shoulders, and the storm beyond the cliff's edge felt closer than ever. "What was that?" I growled.

Link stood and looked down at me. "I can't help you if you won't let me, but maybe Impa was right. I guess you just like having the crimes of others to hide your own sins. When this whole mess is over, who will you have? You've ripped up everyone else involved with your life, and you're doing a good job of driving me away, too. I'm trying to _help _you – by Din, I swear I am – but you are making it so damn difficult!"

"Why do you have to try so hard?" I yelled back at him. "I don't need to dump my soul out onto everyone around me!"

"There is no one around you, Zelda! You've killed them all, or threatened them, or destroyed their lives! You've got no one left!"

"I don't need to use other people as crutches. Why are you so set on proving me wrong somehow? What do you want from me?" I threw my arms up and I felt the air crackle and shift around me.

Link grabbed my shoulders, pushed my arms down, and forced me to stop moving. "When all is said and done, and you've killed Ganondorf with your own hands, then what?"

I glared at him, his face inches from mine, and jerked my arms from his grasp. I ran to Whiskey and untied his lead rope, threw myself over his back, and dug my heels into his side. Before Link could even yell my name entirely, I was tearing away through the storm towards nothing.

After I killed Ganondorf, my life would be nothing. My only purpose was an evil one, and while I knew that before, it never bothered me until Link said it. So I ran away.

SsSsS

Zelda appeared below the cliff a few hours before dawn, after the storm had run across Death Mountain and away from the Zora's River. I had chased out after her when she left, but I had no idea where she had gone or even which direction she a Whiskey had sprinted into. Epona and I ran around looking for them until the wet cold made both of us shiver and retreat back to shelter. Zelda was gone. If she wanted to come back, she would, but I didn't think it likely.

When she came back, she looked like someone had dragged her from the depths of Lake Hylia. She was shivering, but her face was set into hard lines. I got up and walked to her, not knowing what I should say, but she held her hand up before I could speak. She nodded towards my bedroll and I sat down again.

"I have but one purpose in this life, Link," she said quietly. "I am going to kill Ganondorf. I don't know what I will do after that, but for now, that purpose keeps me breathing. As for why I hate him so much…"

She sighs and tugged on the end of her braid. I waited for her to speak. Sheik used to do something like that, rubbing his shoulder whenever he was deciding what to next. I knew Sheik so well, and while it was great to have my friend back, Zelda still felt like a whole different human being.

She closed her eyes and let out a short breath. "I'll show you part of why I hate him," she said, pushing her braid behind her shoulder. She grabbed the bottom of her tunic and pulled it over her head, leaving her in only an undershirt and leggings. Grabbing what I thought to be thin air next to her bare shoulder, she slowly pulled her fist down the length of her arm. I was watching her fist for the whole of this procedure, but when I glanced back to her arm, I saw it covered in scars. Not just scars… _designs, _looping and cutting across each other in a manner that some might consider artistic. I did not, however.

I thought this arm was the extent of the scarring until I saw that she was muttering under her breath and pulling the invisible skin off the other arm as well. There, the patterns glowed in the campfire, bright like the lightning beyond. Zelda sighed, and I thought she might cry, but when I caught a glimpse of her eyes, I saw the farthest thing from tears in her eyes. I saw complete and total hatred. Zelda was blind to my presence now; she was absorbed in her internal rage. She dragged the undershirt from her body, unlaced the fabric covering her chest, and kicked her leggings from her ankles. Princess Zelda was stark naked in front of me, but watching her peal the magic skin away from her scarred flesh was the least erotic sight I have ever seen. From her shoulders, her breasts, her sides and back and stomach. Her legs were long maps of searing white lines. Finally she rubbed her face in her hands, what I took to be a gesture of shame, but she was only removing the last of the magic skin. Her cheeks, neck, even her eyelids were covered in scars. No part of her body was untouched by the immobile lightning flashes.

When she had finished removing the fake skin from her scars – even her fingertips were scarred – she walked closer to me. She looked worse than most of the burn victims I'd seen in war. She held out a hand to me and I saw that she had no fingernails on her left hand. A shiver of disgust gripped my spine and my stomach churned, but it was for Ganondorf, not for her current state. He ripped her fingernails out. And had somehow stunted their regrowth magically. "What kind of sick maniac…" I muttered.

"These are the physical scars Ganondorf left for me. At first it was a punishment. I had refused to cooperate one night when I was left with an influential nobleman. I was sick of old men touching me, but he was the first who had tried to rape me. Ganondorf took a knife and carved an old Gerudo curse right here," Zelda said, placing two fingers below her right ear. "I cried and squealed that first time, and he grew obsessed with making me squirm like that. The next time… that was also a punishment…"

I didn't know how to help her. How could I think I knew anything about helping Ganondorf's victims? I gulped and tried to say her name, but I just croaked.

"I was punished for not saying thank you after the same nobleman was permitted to rape me. I cried less that time. That was here." She turned and showed me a circular design on her hip amid veins of white scars. "Look farmiliar?"

It did. Swirling, thick lines, pointed accents…if it was in black ink…

"Ganondorf used my body to design his Creant symbols. He also mapped his early victories in my skin. But most nights he just wanted to see me cry out. First it was just a knife. Then the knife went deeper. Then he burned me, branded me like cattle. Hammered tattoo lines into my sides. Cast spells to send the ink bellow my skin to fester and grow infected until I was terribly sick, when he would come and cut me more. My fingernails," she lifted her left hand to examine the scarred stubs. Her lips twisted. "Recalling those nights makes me ill."

She finally looked back at me as the memories calmed. "He continued to mutilate me by night and keep me looking court-worthy for the sick old noble bastards by day until there was no more skin left on my body to destroy. He shaved my hair off last and tattooed his final Creant designs into my skull. Then he tossed me into the streets. I looked monstrous, and as if there wasn't enough hate in my heart, I hadn't learned to cover my scars with magic yet." The laughter following this comment was bitter, but not nearly so bitter as I thought deserving. "Society didn't care for the disfigured beggar-girl." She looked down at her feet, her bare toes scarred around the nails there. "At first I tried to tell people that I was the Princess…they didn't believe me. Eventually I learned enough magic to cover myself and heal some of the wrongs. I managed to grow back most of my nails, but I'll never get these ones…" Her left hand, bare and covered with white lines, hung between us.

I stood and walked to her, and she looked up at me with flat eyes. Her facial features were still recognizable under all the scars, but just barely. I took her hand in mine and grabbed her other hand as well. I spread her arms out from side to side like wings, hoping she could forgive Hyrule one day.

SsSsS

Link grabbed my hands and lifted my arms from my sides. He ran his hands up and under my arms and then down my sides. He stroked my stomach with the back of his hand and pressed a palm to the small of my back. He touched the tops of my thighs and my backside. He skimmed his fingers up my body, over my breasts, across my neck and shoulders, and finally cupped my face in his palms. I watched his face as his did this, and he didn't look disgusted. Or afraid or pitying or disapproving. But as he ran his hands all over my body, not for a moment did I feel like he wanted my body. His callused hands passing over my deformed skin made it feel young and new. His touch wasn't to arouse me, but to make me human again.

I stared into his eyes as he held my face in his hands. He had seen all of my skin and hadn't balked in horror. As I watched him, his lips spread across his face, and I smiled back at him. I didn't even think about it. "Thank you," I told him.

He leaned forward kissed my forehead. The warmth from his lips melted down into my whole body, and for a moment I saw myself as I might have been, with smooth porcelain skin and a wise, forgiving heart. Ganondorf had twisted my skin, but I had killed my spirit. The shell of a woman I was now…

I was happy as Link kissed my forehead and made me feel whole, but the twinge of longing for a life I never had seeped into the moment and tainted it with grey uncertainty. Even now, when I was calm and felt like my soul wasn't yet destroyed, this life didn't feel right. We were off somehow, and the feeling made cold return to my fingers and spine as Link leaned back to smile at me again. He threw an arm over my shoulder and led me to the blankets. I wrapped up, and he and I slept side by side, my mutilated left hand in his right. I fell into a complete and blissful sleep, but as I drifted away, I heard Link talking to me.

"You are not the only person in the world with scars, Zelda. Even I have one below my ear, now."

Had I been fully awake I would have been horrified. I gave him those scars, and he didn't think about how much that made me like our enemy.

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**Well that was fun. Listened to a lot of Florence Welch and Gregory and the Hawk when I wrote this. As usual, reviews appreciated. Let me know what worked well and what sucked things best left unsucked. - DD  
**


	9. Chapter 9

**Oh look, I did that thing where I don't update this for an ungodly amount of time. Whoops. Here is my three thousand word apology letter. I took some liberties with the construction of certain Ocarina elements, like the size of Kakiriko, names, locations of certain oddities, so on and so forth. But it's fanfiction. That's just what we do. Enjoy. (Music du jour = ****Gotye - Bronte)  
**

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Kakariko, oh sweet Kakariko. It was so good to ride into my sweet little slice of nostalgia, away from the warzones and the politics and the cries rising without end. The town was an anchor in time; though the faces grew heavy with wrinkles and stress, they were the same faces I'd found my first day in Kakariko, when I'd stumbled tired and bleary eyed up the great stairs cut into the hill leading to the town gates. Catlow was still the butcher, Kuru still robbed people with his archery games, my friend Zisa still kept cuccos and bred them to perfection. Construction workers busied themselves around foundations, the reportedly haunted house stood untouched, and the windmill loomed over the whole town. I lifted my eyes to its churning arms as Zelda and I pulled Epona and Whiskey to a halt.

"So that's it," she said.

I lifted my eyebrows at her. "You've never seen the windmill? I thought you'd been here before."

"Yes, but I never knew the Eye of Truth was in there before. That casts a bit of a different light on the structure."

She glanced over at me and I struggled to recognize anything about her under the swath of her glamour. I saw her with dull brown hair, a weak jaw, flat eyes, and a face pocked with scars. Nothing like her real scars, of course. These I could see without my heart filling with bile and my fists clenching tight. We had decided to travel as cousins. If anyone asked, her name was still Tetra, but her home in the south had been destroyed in a raid, her husband and young son killed, and her face scarred. She had contacted me and I was helping her were move to a cottage north of Kakariko, between the town and Death Mountain, where her brother, should he survive the War, would join her later. Zelda had also dowsed me in disguise. My hair was as chocolate as her character's and Zelda cast a charm to make the muscles of my arms look much less bulky. We were as unassuming as could be, just another uprooted family wandering through the little slice of pleasant that was Kakariko.

The whole town looked quiet as I'd remembered, but Ganondorf's fingers still pried into the corners of my memories here. Castle guards were stationed most everywhere – every street and square had one, and in a few rare instances, an ill-tempered Creant was meandering about looking for the slightest offense to overcorrect. There were a few more burnt out husks of buildings than I'd remembered. Fewer children ran after the cuccos. There was a line of guards glaring from the hilltop of Impa's home.

"Isn't Impa's place open to the public anymore?" I asked Zelda as we rode below it.

She looked up at the humble building and tightened her lips.

"Not as of recent," she said, and she rode off in front of me.

"What did you do to it?"

I could see her shoulders tensing up ahead.

"I may have broken in to it."

"And why was that?" I asked, stifling a laugh.

"To steal a charcoal sketch of me she had."

"Yes, because Nayru forbid she remember what you look like. Never mind that you never _look_ like you, always dolled up in magic masks."

"Just drop it."

I'd caught up to her and was disappointed to see something I could recognize under all the magic: Zelda's hardest features were brewing resentment again.

"I'm sorry, Zelda."

"Careful there, Lukah," she said and cut me the ghost of a grin. "Don't want anyone to overhear. Not that we simple peasant folk could possibly cause our goodhearted government the slightest bit of trouble, eh, cousin?"

I whistled as we turned the corner towards the Kakariko Downy Inn. "No ma'am, Miss Tetra. Not us darlings."

Her small smile was a bit more genuine now, but I had a knack for knocking it off her face.

"You're really set again the powers that be, huh."

"Just a tad," she sighed. I sensed more than a little hostility in her voice.

"Well, I can't exactly blame you."

She snorted. It wasn't my most graceful damage control, and I could just _feel_ her thinking "Damn right you can't", but we would be fine. When I had Sheik, we were always fine, no matter how abrasive he was or how much I championed the paper ideals he mocked. And Zelda was Sheik. Zelda was Sheik. I knew it, but there was just that breathe of disconnect in my mind every time I considered it. My friend Sheik was my Princess Zelda.

_My,_ I thought. _As if I could ever have that kind of hold on this hurricane of a woman._

As we tied up our horses with instructions they be taken in to the Inn's stables, I watched Zelda and worried. Nine days I'd been with her, and there was no predicting how she would behave from one hour to the next. How did I get tangled up in all this? I couldn't exactly wriggle out now, but I couldn't decide whether or not I was glad to be with her. She was sweet at moments, venomous at others, and her past frightened me. How many people had she killed? What kind of crimes – not just against the Castle, but against the human spirit – did she commit just to push her ill-fated agenda? Zelda was a safer ally than Ganondorf, but not by much.

Yet I found myself tied to her. I don't think I could flee from her cause now even if I could make up my mind against her. It was complicated but…comfortable, almost. It felt familiar.

After just a week.

"_Lukah!_" she hissed at me at the front desk.

I shook the clouds from my head and looked at the ample innkeeper who'd been glaring at me over her paperwork.

"There is no way," she spit in a heavy Eastern accent, all clipped endings and broad vowels, "that you two are refugees."

"That is so rude!" I said. "How could you-"

"No, sir. No you don't, young man!" she said, slapping a meaty, aged hand onto the counter. "You have too much easy money, neither of you are skinny enough, your clothes are in good shape, you have _two healthy horses_ for Din's sake! How dumb do you think I am? The real refugees say 'please' _far _more than you spoiled ingrates so thank you for your consideration of my fine establishment, but I will have no Castle officials in my Inn tonight, _thank you!_"

"Ma'am, please!" Zelda yelped, tears slipping from the corners of her dull brown eyes. She glanced around the Inn to make sure it was empty and flattened herself against the desk, trying to suppress her crying. She whispered her plea with clasped hands. "We just want to get married! Get over the mountains, away from my father, and get married!"

The Innkeeper raised an eyebrow. "Who is your father?"

Zelda shook her head wildly. "I can't, I cannot say. Please ma'am, please!"

While the innkeeper was enraptured with Zelda's performance, I tried to act as though I too was a sad victim of this story we were spinning so easily. I placed a palm on her shoulder and tried to drag her away from the desk as an idea fell across my mind.

"Come now, Mella, this is no place for us," I whispered just loud enough in her ear that the innkepper would hear.

And it paid off. Her eyes flew open.

"MELLA!" she shrieked. "MELLA, IN MY INN! WHY, WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SO?"

The innkeeper clapped her hands together in glee and ran to get our bags.

"Oh my, this is so exciting, so grand indeed! Just wait, just wait till I tell-"

"NO!" I shouted. "You can't! If even the slightest word gets out, Noble Highwall will find us and we'll never get away!"

"So it's true!" said the innkeeper, her eyes gleaming. "You're marrying him, Mella! Such a plain fellow you've chosen. But oh, I'm sure you're both wearing disguises, surely you aren't so plain looking yourself. No wonder you have money. Come along, Mella and fiancé!"

We drowned in her chatter all the way to our room, the innkeeper lugging our bags even after I asked to carry them. _Mella _asked that we have time for a long nap and gave orders that we were not to be disturbed until well after sunrise the next day. The innkeeper winked at her and I did my damnedest not to sigh at the gesture as she nearly skipped down the hallway.

"Why Link," said Zelda. "You just turned a wrought iron woman into a squirming little girl. Who is Mella?"

"Some noble's daughter whose name always pops up in town," I replied. "Glad that worked out."

"So you didn't really know what you were doing there."

"No. I did not."

"Huh. Well done. Shall we work now?"

I nodded and strode over to close the door. The episode was finished. The door shut and we began planning once more.

"Impa made it sound like this place is a mess," Zelda said.

We were sitting on the floor, cross legged, our bodies bracketing a map of Kakariko I'd purchased years before. The plan was to leave the inn an hour after midnight, sneak through town along the farm in the northwest sector of town, and move into the grave cavern from there. I'd had to explain to Zelda that while the windmill was our target, the only way to access the recesses of the building we needed was through a system of tunnels originating in the mouth of a grave. And it was these grave catacombs that troubled me so.

"What's the problem with the graveyard?" Zelda asked.

"Well," I sighed, weighing how best to tell her. "Impa chose the path because of the divine defenses that had already been put in place on the tunnels, but the defenses aren't so much a physical threat as…"

I ran my fingers through my hair. I was tired. I couldn't remember the last time I hadn't been tired.

"So it messes with your mind," Zelda said.

"Yes."

"Which is problem enough for most people, but with special little me on board," she grimaced, a sick and sinister grin that made my stomach flip, "this should be quite the harrowing nightmare, no?"

"Well…yes."

"Does the _divine _tunnel ask rude questions? Is it mean? Will it make me see my dead body with spears protruding from my gut? What is it, Link?"

"Well, your last best wasn't so far off," I sighed.

She looked at me, expecting some answer. When I held my silence, Zelda threw her palms up in defeat, raising her eyebrows.

"I gave you my guesses, Link, what is it?"

I heaved one final sigh.

"It shows you all the people you've killed."

"Ah," she said. "Just that."

I studied her and tried to read her emotions, but years of dealing in the streets had made her face stone cold when she ran into any real trouble. Even now, without the glamour, she didn't look whole to me, like there was too much of her strewn out with her guts and her scars and her pains from the last decade to make up for anything we were doing now. I was afraid to take her underground.

"Just them, I guess," she said, and with that she stood and walked to the window. She stood for a very long time looking out at the sky growing dimmer. It was becoming common, my seeing only her back when she didn't feel like speaking. Her dark blonde hair, tossed with that dusky red, was tumbling down her back now over a blue tunic Malon had sent with us. She uncrossed her arms and I couldn't help staring at her left hand. Those fingernails weren't real. She magics them into place, but they aren't real, they aren't real, they–

"Do you remember when Old Man Narrows sent us out of the Zorra Valley with twelve men and thirty arrows for five hours and told us to kill the hundred mercenaries to hit our wall of highly-trained green-coats?" Zelda asked, spinning around.

I smiled. "The Bottleneck Battle."

"And I'll be damned if we didn't do just what he said."

"Lost a good man that day, though."

"Grome. I told him to watch that blind spot."

I shook my head. "That was a fairly bloodless day. Canashaw. You remember Canashaw?"

"Those flatlands? Southeast of the valley?"

I nodded.

"Killed a lot of people that week," she said.

"I still have nightmares sometimes."

"Yeah, well, I have better things to have nightmares about."

My eyebrows shot up.

"You don't ever think about that? Don't hate yourself for it?"

"I have greater concerns than that ancient battle. I can't change the things that happened there, nor would I want to."

"What?"

"We won, didn't we?"

"Who is the 'we' in that? You weren't really a green-coat."

"What's your point? You green-coats won, and I saw the score tip the way I wanted."

"Why were you even tipping scores? And why did I never see you grieve with the rest of us?"

She sighed, pressing her fingers to her temples.

"I had other things to worry about."

"We killed five thousand men in thirty-six hours and I didn't see you so much as pass a finger over you face in prayer. _Five thousand_ and you don't bat an eyelash."

"When did I ever 'bat an eyelash', Link? I was always like that, and you never minded then. Hell, you said it was good to have a rock."

"Some rock you were, disappearing into the hills every other week, only showing up when we needed you half the time, never telling us any way to find you or find out if you were still alive or wounded-"

"And none of those things were your business. We were partners in war, not in society, not in Din forsaken family."

"That was family, you bitch!"

She fell silent, and the quiet hung in the air like the ring of a slap, as if I just slapped her face. Somewhere along the way we had gotten close up, our chests only a handbreadth apart now, spitting and seething as we stared each other down.

"How did you never feel that?" I said. "No connection to any of us? Nothing? Some of my fondest memories are of our nights around the fire in the glen in the hills, away from the mess of it all. And in war? We did hideous, atrocious things to other human beings in those years, and you don't feel any kind of connection?"

Zelda turned from me and went to the bed where she lay down and stared at the ceiling. I could still feel waves of disdain rolling off her.

"Link," she said, low and too-calm, "I fought for certain reasons. And while I have many, many nightmares, none of them are about turning spears in soldiers' necks. Please, just, please can we sit quietly until it's time to leave."

"I really missed Sheik."

Her head snapped up to look me in the eye.

"Is that what this is all about?"

I shook my head. "But still. I did. Why didn't you ever give us anything? Give me anything? Messages, letters, anything at all?"

Her head was back down on the mattress now, her thumbs winding over and around each other.

"All that's traceable, Link. And remember that while I do appreciate your company, that it would pain me to see you go, I have a purpose. I'm not going to jeopardize my goal."

I nodded even though her words made me sick. She'd allotted the rest of her time in Hyrule to killing Ganondorf, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it.

"How long as the sun been down, Link?"

"Oh, half an hour maybe."

"Come sit by me, Link," she said, flipping her palm and beckoning me with her fingertips. I smiled and walked to the bed, lay down next to her, grabbed her hand. When I squeezed, she squeezed back.

"Let's tell easy stories till its time," she said.

I laughed. "I don't have many easy stories in my arsenal. And I think you have even fewer."

"Then make them up. But make them easy and make them sweet. Make them last till an hour past midnight."

"Alright, Zelda. Alright."

I swallowed, deciding where to begin.

"Okay, um," I started, shifted my legs, cleared my throat. "This is but one of the stories of which the people speak. Uh, long ago, there existed a kingdom…"

And for hours I spoke. And for those hours she listened to the tale I wove of a boy whose sister was kidnapped, and the pirate princess Tetra, and an evil king whose name I did not say but who we both knew was real, always real in our blacker little lives. And I went on about dragons and tree people and the ocean, the ocean, the great free ocean where the story could be avoided, where, when I felt Zelda growing tense beside me, I would take our hero out to search for treasure, which he would always find. And I put Hyrule underwater, and oh how that made Zelda smile. And that made me smile. The time to leave for the graveyard, to meet our sick pasts, was drawing near, but I kept weaving the story, the easy story that could end in one night with one word.

Zelda listened. Periodically, she squeezed my hand. When she squeezed, I squeezed.

The story went on until half past midnight. I rolled onto my side to look at Zelda, knowing we would have to leave soon.

"What do I do with my heroes? Do they stay in Hyrule and save her? Do they restore her to her former glory?"

Zelda turned on her side, and there is was, there was that faint, sick glint in her eye, that flash of her madness that made my hairs stand on end.

"They drown it. They drown it and never look back."

She squeezed my hand. I didn't squeeze back

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**I'm certain there are typos****! Ain't they grand. R&R if you so please, bitch at me where bitching is well deserved, and I will see you in a week or so with another of these things. Thank you, dears.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Pretty shoddily edited, so forgive that which does not flow with perfect ease and the copious spelling errors. I'm trying to churn the rest of this out in two months or so. I can do it. Just you wait 'n' see. **

**( music du jour: Radiohead - Videotape ; Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Dead Flag Blues ; Sufjan Stevens - The Sleeping Red Wolves)  
**

A few minutes before our departure, in the wake of the impromptu short epic, we laid still. Link's hand was immobile in mine and our flesh was taking on the clammy uncomfortable warmth of prolonged contact. Staring at the ceiling, I felt welded to the bedcover. The idea of standing, sneaking out the window, walking across town with the weary fear-heavy of my feet – I just wanted to start another resolvable tale.

I did not want to go down there. I did not want to see them.

But I reminded myself of the progression of events to follow my finding the Eye of Truth – get to the desert, survive the spirit wastelands, break into the desecrated temple and corrupt the mines in any way possible, and steal the Ocarina of Time right from Ganondorf's clutches. Yes, it was a delicious prospect. But then what? Should I go back to the streets, hiring shadows to send West in my stead? Should I rejoin the war effort knowing that my enemy's supply source had been crippled? Should I find a way to go straight for Ganondorf and loose his blood?

With Link's hand in mine, I found a frightening prospect rising in my belly – I could be happy like this. The simple wasn't bothering me. I could run far from Hyrule, forget about my oath to end Ganondorf, maybe even have chil-

And that's where the fantasy ended. I tried to extend the sweetness of my mediocre aspirations to the idea of children, and the ache in my gut rushed away. I would be a terrible mother. How could I look at any child of mine without seeing the faces of other mother's children I'd stolen? What if I beat them to lessen my aches? Would I cover my scars? Would I lie the rest of my life?

This notion of plain joy was a charming one, but it was not for me. I was raised royalty and reborn in murder. Simple life could never be my style. Too late, too late, just a passing thought now before I took up my rapiers and ran to meet the dead. Eight years of this.

_Cheer up, dear,_ I told myself. _At this rate, you'll be done soon._

The want for simplicity washed from my limbs and I squeezed Link's hand once more. If the rest of life was to be tumultuous, this I would enjoy. I sighed and sat up, tying my hair in a high knot and tightening the laces of my boots. I looked at Link over my shoulder.

"Ready?"

He closed his eyes for a moment. "I suppose," he answered, and with that he was up, grabbing his shield and his pack. Open the window pane, hoist ourselves through, land, run, steal away to the graveyard.

_We're coming, lost souls. _I thought. _And we're sorry._

SsSsSsS

Zelda didn't say a word as we snuck through town, only nodding when I offered orders in a low voice. Our feet were as quiet in the loam as the pat of a mother's palm on her infant's back. Luckily the guards seemed more concentrated on the urban center of town, so we saw almost none of them. Before the graveyard gates, we passed under the bulk of the giant windmill, roaring above. Even outside, I heard the faint chimes of the organ grinder's song from inside.

Passing through the gates, a grey and white cat ran in front of us, and I felt Zelda tense behind me. I began telling her a story of Dante, the old groundskeeper who used to throw rupees after him for me when he wasn't feeling to bitter. Her shoulders relaxed some, but I knew she'd be on edge until this thing was done, until she had the Eye in her hand.

I stopped in front of a grave on the Southwest side and said my silent prayers to Farore as Zelda paused at my side.

"This is the one?" she asked.

I nodded and pointed to the tiny triforce etched into the lower left side of the tombstone.

"Then now what?"

I glanced at her and filled my lungs with chilled night air before dipping into the Song of Time.

"Look deep in the past;

Learn what you can before you stride on through the world.

Live bravely and know

That you are just a wand'ring mote, floating in time.

Not a clock will hold its breath;

Not a man can put off death.

So remember not to spend your whole life running.

Even kings can't hope to best the sun."

And with that, the grass and weeds over the grave peeled away and stairs sunk into the moist ground. I put a hand on Zelda's shoulder.

"You'll be fine," I said.

She laughed bitterly. "I know. But I still don't want this."

And with that, she brushed my fingers from her arm and strode down the steps, entering upon lost memories. I was afraid because I could not decide if this was one of her compassionate moments, where she would break, or if she would march past her dead without a second glance, which would break me. I stifled a shiver and followed her down.

It was just as dark as I remembered, but now, years after I first ventured into these catacombs, I felt confined, like the walls were only an inch away from each of my shoulders. I wanted to reach forward and grab Zelda's arms, though I wasn't sure whether to steer her straight or give myself something to clutch. In the complete dark, I my hands felt so empty. At last I reached out my arms in front of me to find her, but caught nothing. She wasn't there, she wasn't there, and when I swung my arms out to the side, no walls either. Oh Farore, what had I done, where had I gone, I would never escapescapescape-

"Link," I heard from my far left.

"Yes?" I answered, thanking the Goddesses as Zelda's soft, steady voice grew closer and closer.

"Will anything go awry if I light a small flame?"

I wanted to laugh at myself. I should have just told her that to begin with. I sighed in relief.

"Yes, yes, of course you can."

And with that the lowered angles of her face were lit, her chin, the bottom of her full cheeks, the arches of her eyebrows. Her extended palm held a small fire, hovering slightly amidst her fingers. I smiled at her and she nodded back.

"Where should we be going?" she asked.

"It's linear enough for a time," I answered. "It's after we meet the false dead that the paths split and we'll need a guide."

"False dead?" she said, and I detected the faintest trace of hope in her voice. "So they're just illusions?"

"Well, yes. But they could fool the best. They will speak to you if you let them. And they appear perfectly real. You can touch a few of the more important ones, and they _can_ hurt you. So please don't lower your guard completely, Princess. These are not light dealings."

She nodded as she expanded the flame in her left hand and grabbed mine with her right by the wrist.

"Let's find them," she said.

And for a while, the grey of our visibility was calm. We evaded the pitfalls and traps of the passage with ease, navigating around flooded chambers and avoiding the gleaming eyes of keese when we could. As the minutes morphed into footsteps, Zelda's hand slipped into mine – not the curled finger grasp of deep affection, but palm to palm, our thumbs on the backs of each other's hands, the touch of a trusting soul. Even though she held my sword hand and hers was occupied with the hovering torch, I wasn't very afraid for our safety. I was finding it easy to ignore the oncoming threat of meeting out dead. For now, walking through chambers, we were fine. We were fine.

Until I heard a distant moan.

"What was that?" Zelda said, so low I barely heard.

It was my turn to grab her wrist.

"Let's go. Move fast, don't turn around. Just… come on, let's move."

I pulled her forward, but the light was behind me now. It's meager glow only reached a few paces in each direction, and while I thought I knew where the door was in the sandy chamber we strode through, I could hear the moan building. Behind us, around us, until it sounded as though my ears were purely made of this sound, the great echoing moan, the keeling cry for flesh to hold.

"Zelda, _faster!_" I demanded, but she had stopped moving. The flame flickered in her hand. As it faded out, I saw one slumbering towards her, seconds from her. The Redead's hollow sockets looked even deeper in the poor lighting, it's ancient rotting skin pocked with scars from the prying fingers of its companions. The arms began to reach for Zelda as I felt the cold grip my spine and whisper to me _standstillstandstillwhydon'tyoujuststandstill? _The closer they came to me the clammier my skin became and the more violent the demands for immobility grew. As the very last of the light from Zelda's torch died, I felt the first hand try to grab me, and I jumped forward.

I grabbed Zelda and pried the dead fingers from her, the snap of their bones mingling with my voice whistling as quickly as I could. I flung Zelda up over my shoulders, and as the Redeads began to slow, my song grew louder and stronger until I was belting it as well as I could.

"Come and rise, come and rise, save me from the dark!"

Over and over I chanted the lyrics until the Redeads were completely still as I bolted for the door. I ran and ran until my boot caught on an upturned stone and the moan began behind me again, faint as fear in the afternoon.

"Nayru, Nayru, please, what I would give for a light!"

And it was faint, so very faint, but from Zelda's bag at her hip, a fairy emerged, glowing pale blue, and floated before me as I ran down the corridors in search of the vast hall where Zelda and I would find our tolls. Gradually the surroundings grew lighter and brighter until the fairy swirled around my head and swirled far up into the air, back to its Goddess. Still I ran until I felt Zelda shifting on my shoulders, and I looked around us with a sigh of relief.

"What happened?" she mumbled as I stopped to put her lithe form down.

"Redeads," I said. "They got you in their embrace and were doing their damndest to suck the life from your lungs."

She shuddered. "Are there anymore down here?"

"Possibly," I said. "But it doesn't matter much now."

"What? Wait, why?"

I nodded to the giant double doors are the end of the well lit hall.

"Because we're here."

"Oh," she said. "Oh."

I studied her gaze as she stared down the long corridor, and there was a shred of panic in the width of her eyes. Her pupils dilated. Her breath was a touch uneven. She gulped, and for a flash, I saw her face light up with lightning-white scars. I couldn't tell if it was her stress or my imagination, but I was unnerved.

"Tell me it will be fine," she said.

I took her shoulders in my palms.

"Zelda, you will be fine. They can't hurt you now."

"Oh, I know that. They just…"

"There's nothing you can give them now."

"I know that as well, but that doesn't mean I don't owe them anything."

"Do you know how many there will be?"

And with that, she assumed her blank face, the stoic mask for dealing with strain.

"I have an idea," she said.

_As do I, Zelda. _War is hectic, but I could still count the thuds following the swing of my blade.

And with that she snapped her head back to look at the ceiling, her fists clenching, her eyes hot with suppressed tears.

"Goddamn it, I can feel it coming," she said quietly through gritted teeth.

"Feel… feel what?"

"I just, I can't…I can't stay a single mind, a single person, and I can feel when the fouler bits begin to stir." She walked to the wall and began smashing the flat edge of her fist into a support beam, her head dropped and her shoulders trembling. "I don't like this, I don't want it anymore."

"Anymore?"

She sniffed and flattened her palm over the beam, wrapping her other arm tight over her waist.

"It's how I survived. After I hit the streets." Her head swung back and forth, wisps of hair drifting around her. A tremor shot through her shoulders and I heard her suck in a sharp lungful of air. "I needed the darker mind to stay alice. And I need it still to accomplish my… goals. But I'll be damned if the in-between isn't a bitch to swallow."

I walked to her in two strides, draped an arm over her shoulders, and pulled her back to the center of the corridor. I pulled her down and we sat cross legged, across from each other, like we had on the floor of the inn.

"Once I saw you in the garden as a child, and you were singing a song. I only remember a single line of the song, but I remember it often. Do you remember?"

"You were in the garden…"

"It said _close your eyes and feel revived._"

"That's the lullaby. And that line is from the middle-"

"Zelda," I said, taking her face in my hands. "Close your eyes. Breathe."

Her lip hung open for a moment like she meant to protest, but then her lids dropped over her tear-red eyes and she grew still. I ignored the bruises rising on her arms from the Redeads and I took her arms in my hands below the elbow. She did the same to me. We leaned forward, touching the crowns of our foreheads together. It was a position we had utilized only half a dozen times in the War. It meant we had Hell ahead of us but we needed to breathe first, remember who we were and why we were fighting. It would only last a few seconds, enough to sigh deep once or twice, but now, in the long corridor, we held each other like this for many long minutes. Her panicked exhales fell in sync with mine, her grip loosened around my arms. And I felt quick little tremors fade from her pulse. And sometimes my shivers echoed hers. Until it was time.

I pulled back and looked at her. I could count her eyelashes, we were so close.

"You're going to be all right?" I asked.

And with that a flame flicked in her eyes, and a touch of the mad Zelda was back, but only a shred. Just enough to make her grab my fist in hers, squeeze my fingers hard, stand up, walk towards the doors.

"Link," she said, and I was prepared for something to follow in the trail of my name, but she only nodded as she looked back to me. Her fists were unclenched. Her breath was regular. She picked up her feet and walked all the way to the door before stopping.

"Now," she said, not turning back to me. "We will go now."

So I walked up beside her. We each heaved a tall door aside, and we entered the hall.

The cavern was too bright when we swung the doors open. But I didn't need to see the high pitch of the marble pillars, the stretching of the grey beams overhead as they reached for the far, far end of the hall, far beyond all our shades waiting quietly for our procession. When our eyes adjusted to the light, we saw a long line of sallow faces on each side of the vast hall. To the right were grey soldiers with foreign complexions, two paces apart each. To the left, people of all colors, ages, genders. They were crowded together, three per pace in most places. Zelda lurched beside me, and I thought she was going to hurl, but she was just dipping her head for some reason. In prayer perhaps, or wiping away tears. But I could not see through the thick veil of her unkempt locks. She was a separate soul, but when her eyes leveled with mine, leveled with the eyes of the rows of strangers, she was masked again. A stoic marble statue, cut a thousand years ago, features and conviction weathered by time but never destroyed. She squeezed my fingers tight in her fist before letting them go.

"Attend to yours," she said, low and peaceful.

So I did. I turned to my line of soldiers and tried to count them down the row, but the hall was too long. So I walked to the first soldier and I nodded. He nodded in return. I strode forward, nodded to the next. He returned the gesture. And so I went, nodding down the line, the soldiers growing younger and less experienced as I went. I knew better than to expect any easing of this pain in seeing faces dead by my hand; Impa had explained to me the first time I was down here with her, when my row was empty and hers as dense if not as diverse as Zelda's, that the Goddesses had designed this trial. So it was no light task. The more emotionally crippling the dead soul, the closer to your goal you would find him. Or her. I worried what Zelda would find at the end of her row. Mine was of only men who'd know the possibilities even if they didn't grasp the politics. My concern for myself was how young they would be at the exit, how fresh-faced and soft.

I was just nodding to a far Southern Lieutenant when I heard a cry from behind me. I spun on my heel and saw Zelda, swathed in her full court gown, with a man's face in her hands, their foreheads pressed together, her lips moving fast and her shoulders much steadier than his. He was middle-aged man with receding hair and could have been a brother to the man I'd first seen Zelda terrorizing in the bar that first night. Only a week and a half ago. That just didn't seem possible.

Zelda stepped back from the man and raised three vertically aligned fingers, touching them to her forehead, chest, and left wrist as she dipped into generous curtsy. I had not seen a traditional Hylian salute like that since the year her father died. Zelda rose and turned to her next victim, a bland looking woman of thirty. The Princess took the woman's head in her hands and kissed each of her cheeks, whispering something to her, too. Then she fell into the same elaborate curtsy.

And so she crept down her crowd of deceased, spending at least half a minute with each, more commonly more. Most of the women she kissed on the forehead. Most of the men she took by the shoulder. Some cried, some turned their faces from her, but for each and every soul she whispered and curtsied. As she progressed down the line, I saw more and more women and middle aged men in the line. Most of her soldiers had been crowded by the entrance. Apparently war truly hadn't bothered her conscious too much. I believed her now: she had darker concerns to fuel her nightmares.

The farther down she came, the more I could hear of her words. They were not, as I had expected, a pleading apology. When she was only two paces away from me, three quarters of an hour after we had entered, I could hear at last.

"I am sorry that this happened to you," she breathed, slow and certain. "That the threads of our lives should have crossed is a great misfortune. I have goals, and while I know they are vile and I know I shall not be forgiven for my many sins, I have yet to be deterred. So I am truly sorry to see you here. Rest in peace. May the Goddesses be so very sweet to you. May my crimes not have ruined in full the lives of your loved ones. May their faces be blessed with many smiles."

The man in her grip nodded and bit his tongue to stave off tears. When she curtsied, he dipped his head back. The next man was a Creant, a very young one, and to my confusion, she treated him with the same decency. Her monologue was not the exact same for him, and he fought no tears, but he grabbed her hand and squeezed it. She smiled before sinking into her curtsy.

I was enraptured with Zelda's attention towards the souls. I had expected screaming, tears, violence on her part, but now I saw the monarch she was raised to be until Ganondorf seized control. The calm and complete attention she gave each of these people – not even real people, just the images and actions of people – made me consider that she might actually be able to rule the country when Ganondorf was dead. Then I remembered her wicked grin as she slashed a knife below my ear, and as I touched the scabs with the pads of my fingers, I just didn't know what to think. But I watched Zelda, down and down the line, paying no attention to my line of soldiers. No attention at all. So I couldn't see the end of my row.

As the end of the hall came into view, Zelda's line melted into women and young people, twenty year olds, seventeen year olds. She spent much longer with these souls. There was one woman – from her sobs I figured had lost her family before she lost herself – who Zelda took into her arms and held as she grabbed at the lace and silk of the fine royal gown, moaning for a past she could not change. Zelda whispered many things into her ear. Most of all she said that Nayru's compassion enveloped all the cold children. For the sake of the sobbing woman, I hoped it was true. More than that, I hoped Zelda meant it.

As Zelda's encounters grew longer and longer, I looked forward and saw the end of her line. There, in a filthy pinafore, barefoot, looking like she was in living hell, was a child, maybe ten years old as most. And as Zelda stroked the hair of all the mothers and young husbands she had killed, I only watched the little girl. I felt sick. It made sense that Zelda might have killed children; she was a child herself when the world turned her back on her. But this girl. She looked like she hadn't known happiness in a thousand years. And she just looked so damn young. Like a porcelain doll left out in the street with the garbage, chipped and soiled.

And then, after minutes that stretched for miles towards the horizon, they were looking at each other. And Zelda curtsied until she was sitting with crumpled legs on the floor.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Din send you to hell!" the girl shouted. And she tipped back her head and loosed a wail the likes of which I had never heard from any newly-widowed woman or any dying man. And when Zelda reached for her, she flailed, smacking Zelda across the face and running from her. The other shades watched with pity as Zelda lunged forward and nearly fell on her face so she could hold the girl in her arms.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she croaked, voice breaking at last.

"I HATE YOU. LET ME GO, DEVIL WOMAN. NAYRU SAVE ME FROM EVIL, SAVE ME, SAVE ME, PLEASE!" she shouted as Zelda drew her closer and closer, clutching a hand to the back of her head.

"You're so old," the girl cried as she tried to punch Zelda's arms. "You're so old!"

I heard the echo of those words, and I'm sure Zelda did, too. _I never got to grow old. Why should you get to grow old?_

Zelda held the girl and cried, cried, cried, and as I watched, Zelda's spells melted away and her scars glowed bright, and the girl screamed louder until she too was weeping.

"Let me go, let me go! Nayru, Nayru!" the girl shrieked to the high ceiling, and it echoed into my ears as Zelda uncovered her face from the girl's shoulder enough to open her mouth to sing:

"Fall asleep, darling, fall asleep.

Close your eyes and feel revived."

"Help me!" the girl had almost slipped from her grasp, but now Zelda's arms were tangled in the girl's legs, too, grasping her knees to her silk chest. "Help, the Evil One is here! Save me!"

Zelda sang through her trembling tears:

"Soft and deep, it is soft and deep

In the land of dreams."

And the girl's sobbing lost its shrieking edge. Her hands shot up to her face when fingers clamped down over her eyes.

"Make it end, make it all go away!" she whined through heaving sobs. Zelda grabbed her tighter to her still.

"Long are the waking days,

Long sings the jaded jay.

Sleep, let the Goddess soothe your soul."

And then they were holding each other, each sobbing, each trying to sing the ancient and secret song, Zelda's lullaby, that royal promise of peace. Still Zelda chanted _sorrysorrysorry _and the girl wept _save me, save me, save me, please. _They clawed at each other, clamoring for comfort. And when the girl at last turned her blotchy, puffy face into Zelda's shoulder, the Princess's lullaby rose once more through the great hall. And I'll be damned if I didn't hear the slightest echoes that sounded like harmonies, like this once the Goddesses hummed along.

The moment broke. Zelda, remembering our goals, kissed the girl's cheek and looked over her shoulder at me. She turned with a tear-swollen smile, but it dissolved before our eyes could meet. And then her eyes fell to the ground, and she turned back to the girl and held her with a new vigor.

My gut churned. My line of dead. I had not looked to the end of my line of dead.

My limbs filled with dread like lead. It was if I was wearing iron boots when I dragged myself around. And in a moment my eyes were hot with tears and my throat was churning out the ripped kind of shouts you hear in civilian raids. And I wanted to run far away.

"Farore, no," I moaned.

"Don't worry, Link," Malon said as she clutched Trune's hand to her chest. "We would have done it again."

"When…how…"

"They found a batch of your old tagged tack and a pair of fresh hoof prints. It wasn't so difficult for them, really."

The tears spilled over from my eyes. I heard Zelda humming to the girl behind me, the girl humming back. They rocked each other in remorse, but I couldn't bring myself to touch Malon.

"Are… Are you real? Or just –"

"No, Link. You know how these spells work," Trune said. "We are but trials. So chin up."

"You're far from done, Link," Malon, said with a tilted head. I knew it wasn't her. She wouldn't have shown so much decorum.

"Can you help us?" Zelda's voice said from behind my shoulder. She had stood, was holding the girl's hand as she reapplied spells to cover her scars and turned her long gown into soft trousers and a tunic. She regarded Malon with the kind of hopelessly morose expression that looked as if it would never fade.

Malon nodded. She whispered into Trune's ear with the kind of intimacy that made me think that whatever divine power did direct this labyrinth was at least in contact with the dead souls.

"Follow," she smiled calmly. So we did. Zelda kissed the top of the girl's head and sent her back to the crowd, where they all faded back into the thin shadowy air, as did my dead soldiers. Trune, too, faded after nodding to us.

"Are there any more dangers?" Zelda asked, keeping a slight distance from me. I was glad for her company now. She was not the type to drape me in arms and concern just because I had lost something dear. Separation is a key ingredient in many a remedy.

"The worst has passed. Just a jump left," said Malon, her feet floating above the ground as she glided before us.

We moved in still grey, the light growing weaker deep in the ground, and then breathing back into our eyes as the sound of the organ grinder found my ears. Faint, very faint, but within the half hour, we were standing on a stone ledge high above the spinning platform on the windmill floor. Before us was a swirling pair of shelves protruding from the center beam, which spun madly day in and day out.

"The rest," Malon said, "I'm sure you remember. Farewell, Hero. Farewell, Princess. May the next generation live easier than we."

And she faded away into the rafters, and I felt the burn of grief growing in my eyes again until Zelda grabbed my hand.

"I know, Link, I know it's criminal, but we need to finish this now. When we are back to the inn, we can mourn, and though I knew them briefly, I will mourn too. But now, you have to tell me where it is."

I gulped the sharpness of the tears away.

"Across the raised platforms. We jump across, and there's a hollow in the ledge to the far left there."

"So two jumps, to the middle then to the edge?"

I nodded.

She squeezed my hand tighter, let it go, jumped out in front of us onto the passing shelf. When the second one followed, I sailed after her. We reached the far ledge without incident.

"Sing the song again."

"What?" Zelda asked.

"The lullaby, your lullaby, that's what unlocks the vault."

"Oh! Of course, yes."

She cleared her throat.

"Fall asleep, darling, fall asleep

Close your eyes and feel revived.

Soft and deep, it is soft and deep

In the land of dreams.

Long are the waking days,

Long sings the jaded jay.

Sleep, let the Goddess soothe your soul."

The stone before us dissolved, and from an unassuming wooden case, Zelda drew an ornate eyeglass wrought with gold and amethyst. She did not admire it for a second, simply stashing it away safely in my pack before looking for the door.

"Let's get back," she said, and I could hear her darker mind slipping back into control. I slid my palm onto her shoulder.

"Thank you, Zelda."

"For what?"

I shook my head and helped her glide down the high shelf into the concealed stairwell before us, out a back trapdoor that only opened out with the help of the royal song, down through the farm, back through the inn window, and onto the bed, where we fell face up and stared at the ceiling once more, hand in hand, and made up stories. They were long and disjointed, the plot lost in happy side thoughts, but our heroes always found what they wanted. Every protagonist was either a lady farmer or a sober fiancée, each story leading them to greatness before they returned home to raise children and grandchildren, to die very, very old and very, very quietly.

We fell asleep fully clothed with our fingers still twisted together. When we woke at last several hours after dawn, I asked Zelda what we would do now.

"Well," she sighed. "Now we move West. There, we get to Ocarina of Time. And keep it from Ganondorf."

I nodded. "Do you think…" I started, unsure of how to ask her what I would do with or without her permission.

"What is it, Link?"

"If Ganondorf gets all the stones and the Ocarina, he'll be more powerful than you can hope to take down, no?"

"That is correct."

"Then I was thinking," I said "That if we're to be keeping these from him, we need to hide them _well._ So maybe we could hide the Emerald en route to the Desert."

"Where do you propose?"

"Well, I want to bury it on Malon's ranch."

Zelda looked down at her hands for a long breath.

"It isn't the safest place," she said "But it will certainly do. For now. So we will go."

"Thank you, Zelda."

She laughed bitterly and shook her head. "Again with the undeserved thanks."

"Why undeserved?"

"Link, you saw my line of dead. And I saw yours, so I know you are not guiltless either. I just… receiving praise has not been high on my priorities for a very long time."

I nodded because I didn't know how to answer her. But the silence was comforting for us.

"When do we leave?" I asked at last.

She smiled.

"As soon as we can."

* * *

******Let me know what needs fixin' and I will get on it. **

**Reviews are awesome. But not as awesome as YOU!  **

**I am extremely tired. Out, FF. **


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